Which is the
fair sex?
Gender differences in altruism
Passalacqua Gaetano Daniele
Experimental and Behavioral Economics – SS 2017
Prof. Dr. Dorothea Kübler
Table of contents
1. Introduction
2. The experiment
3. Results
4. Conclusions
1. Introduction
Is one sex more fair than the other?
Why is this question important?
Objective: improve the predictive models
including the gender as a variable.
Charitable
giving
Bargaining
Household
decisions
Implication of gender in altruism not yet explored, but some evidence on this:
 Researchers noticed that males and females have different patterns of charitable giving.
 Fundraisers have realized the potential of female donors and are trying to target them with sex-specific
solicitation strategies.
 Policy makers noted differences in philanthropy: women are more responsive to the need for charitable giving.
2. The experiment
Where?
University of Wisconsin and Iowa State University
Who?
Volunteers from intermediate and upper level
economic courses.
Wisconsin (35 + 35) + Iowa (38 + 34) = 142
[2/3 males]
What?
How?
2 experimental sessions, less than an hour,
average earning $9.60.
Modification of the Dictator game: A subject decides
how to allocate a fixed payoff between himself and
another subject, over a series of different budgets and
payoffs, with different relative prices of own-payoff
and other-payoff.
3. Results 1/3
Amount earned if
nothing is passed
Average amount
offered to the other
 The average difference is really low.
 For every problem the choices were really different.
T-stat: statistical
hypothesis test used
to determine if two
sets of data are
significantly different
from each other
3. Results 2/3
 Neither gender is uniformly more altruistic than the other:
Men are more generous when the payoff of the other is higher than the own payoff.
Women are more generous when the other-payoff is equal or lower than their own.
 Men are more sensitive to price (relative price of giving to the other) than women
When it is relatively more expensive to give, women are more generous.
As the price of giving decreases men begin to give more than women.
3. Results 3/3
Individual behavior is consistent
(strongly or weakly) with three
prototypical utility functions
Individual
differences
Free-ride behavior
Equal payoffs for
each participant
Tokens allocated considering
both the payoffs
 Men are more likely to be either perfectly selfish or to maximize total payoffs of both subjects.
 Women are more likely to insist on equality.
4. Conclusions
 When the price of giving is low, men appear more altruistic, when the price is high women are more altruistic.
 Men are more likely to be either perfectly selfish or perfectly selfless, women care more about equalizing payoffs.
Consequences of this study
 Need for more attention to sex differences in experimental economics (differences also in other fields?).
 Implications for experimental methodology: need to take greater care in assuring that studies are gender balanced.
Thank you!
Passalacqua Gaetano Daniele
Experimental and Behavioral Economics – SS 2017
Prof. Dr. Dorothea Kübler
Reference:
Andreoni, J., & Vesterlund, L. (2001). Which is the Fair Sex? Gender Differences in
Altruism. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(1), 293–312.