Ageing and Altruism: Cross-Sectional Evidence from Dictator Games in Sweden

Abstract: We suggest that there is a positive but marginally declining ageing effect on altruistic preferences. By conducting Dictator Games on 82 Swedish psychology students with relatively large variation in age, we empirically test the relationship between ageing and altruistic preferences. Performing a number of regressions we initially control for level of education and income. When robustness checks are executed, these support our suggested age-altruism relationship. Further, we include controls for attitudes and general behaviour: political stance, religiosity and level of generalised social trust. We find our suggested age-altruism relationship to be robust to these controls as well. However, with a cross-sectional data set, the ability to separate ageing from cohort effects is limited.