American Older Adults’ Financial Giving

By Richard Shank

The most common form of financial giving in the U.S. is between parents and children or grandparents and grandchildren. The charitable giving of individuals without children, however, is more complex. New research compares the giving behavior of childless older adults with older adults with children.

Using data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, researchers at RAND in California analyzed the financial transfers to people other than children by older adults. The main finding was that parents give significantly less to other people than older adults without children. This does not impact the frequency of charitable giving, however; rather, a childless individual was likely to give more money with each gift than an older parent. Charitable giving was more likely to occur the older the individual had become, with giving being significantly greater in one’s 60s than in one’s 50s. Parents tended to give about $1,600 less per year in total to family members other than children, friends, and charities.

The results of this study indicate that fund development for charities might be able to segment their donor lists by their parent status in order to target individuals with a greater propensity to give in larger amounts. The frequency of gifting by the childless, however, is roughly equal to those with children.

Source: Adloff, F. 2009. What encourages charitable giving and philanthropy? Aging and Society 29: 1185-1205.

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