Parenting daughters does not increase monetary prosocial behavior: evidence from the Dictator game

Abstract

Prior work suggests that parenting daughters makes the preferences of men more in line with those of women. We use behavior in a Dictator game as a measure of pure social preferences, to test whether parenting daughters increases prosociality, specifically charitable giving. Data is sourced from the German Socio-Economic Panel, where 1,461 participants decided how to split a 50€ endowment between themselves and (separately) a needing domestic or foreign recipient. Our results suggest that parenting daughters does not make men (nor women) more prosocial. This is inconsistent with the female socialization hypothesis, or – alternatively – indicative that “daughter effects” might be minuscule for certain behaviors.