Household Charitable Giving at the Intersection of Gender, Marital Status, and Religion
Abstract
© 2017, © The Author(s) 2017. Past research reveals mixed results regarding the relationship
between gender and charitable giving. We show gender plays a significant role in giving
but only when considered alongside marital status and religion. Using the 2006 Portraits
of American Life Study, we model a household’s propensity to give and the amount given.
We extend past research by disaggregating unmarried households to look at divorced,
widowed, and never-married households, and by including multiple religion measures.
Results indicate households headed by never-married females have lower giving levels
compared with those headed by divorced and widowed women. In households headed by
single males, these differences are largely absent. Religious attendance has a stronger
association with giving in male-headed households. The respondent’s gender is also
related to the amount married households report giving to charity. Future research
on giving should consider both gender and marital status to more fully capture increasing
diversity in American families.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Social SciencesSocial Issues
marital status
gender differences
religion
charitable giving
UNITED-STATES
SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
SAMPLE SELECTION
LIFE-COURSE
COHABITATION
MARRIAGE
BEHAVIOR
MODELS
IMPACT
CONSERVATISM
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17696Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1177/0899764017734650Publication Info
Eagle, D; Keister, LA; & Read, JG (2018). Household Charitable Giving at the Intersection of Gender, Marital Status, and Religion.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(1). pp. 185-205. 10.1177/0899764017734650. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17696.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
David E Eagle
Assistant Research Professor of Global Health
I am an Assistant Research Professor the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities
Research and the Duke Global Health Institute. I am an expert on the health of religious
clergy, the changing shape of churches in North American society, and the implications
of these trends for the professional training of ministers.More recently, my research
ha
Lisa A. Keister
Professor of Sociology
Lisa A. Keister is professor of sociology and public policy at Duke University and
an affiliate of the Duke Network Analysis Center and the Duke Population Research
Initiative. Her current research focuses on organization strategy, elite households,
the processes that explain extremes in wealth and income inequality, and on group
differences in the intergenerational transfer of assets. She has been focusing on
the causes and consequences of net worth poverty recently with colleagues from the
Jen'nan Read
Sally Dalton Robinson Professor
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