Browsing by Author "Wilhelm, Mark Ottoni"

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    Family Structure and Income During Childhood and Subsequent Prosocial Behavior in Young Adulthood
    (10/24/2007) Bandy, Robert; Wilhelm, Mark Ottoni
    Models of young adults’ prosocial behavior—charitable giving and volunteering—are estimated as functions of family structure and income during the stages of childhood. Estimating a model of any subsequent outcome (prosocial or otherwise) as a function of stage-specific family structure and income imposes a set of restrictions on the underlying dynamic model of the child development process. Such restrictions have been implicitly and unknowingly imposed by the family structure specifications used in past research, and in some cases the past restrictions may not be sensible a priori. We consider several specifications used in past research, propose several new specifications with a priori sensible restrictions, and use Bayesian model comparison methods to choose among them. The models are estimated using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its new module the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study. The results indicate that the development of charitable giving and volunteering behavior is associated with family instability and low income in adolescence.
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    Identifying Tax Effects on Charitable Giving
    (12/5/2007) Wilhelm, Mark Ottoni; Hungerman, Daniel M.
    This paper estimates the effects of three federal tax acts—the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (H.R. 1836), the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (H.R. 2), and the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 (H.R. 1308)—on charitable giving, and offers four extensions relative to previous work. First, we use new data—the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study, the philanthropy module in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—that permit the estimation of the effect of switches in itemization status on giving. This is important because switches permit a direct answer to the question: How much of an increase in charitable giving is caused by tax deductibility? Second, the new data permit the estimation of tax effects on charitable giving to secular charities as well as to religious organizations. This is important because the main policy question in the literature on taxes and giving is to evaluate “treasury efficiency”—whether the Treasury can cause more money to flow to charitable organizations by allowing deductibility of giving than by eliminating deductibility and sending the increased tax revenue directly to charitable organizations. By using secular giving, we can focus on the type of giving most relevant to this policy question. Third, the new data allow for improved methodological approaches over past studies. Fourth, we argue that the 2001, 2003, and 2004 federal tax acts were timed such that they provide a set of tax changes suitable for identifying permanent effects of taxes on giving. The estimates based on the analysis of families who switch itemization status suggest that secular giving is price elastic, implying that treasury efficiency holds. In contrast, estimates which impose the restrictions facing other datasets suggest a statistically insignificant price elasticity.
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    Women Give 2018
    (2018-03-13) Mesch, Debra; Wilhelm, Mark Ottoni; Osili, Una; Bergdoll, Jonathan; Han, Xiao; Pactor, Andrea; Ackerman, Jacqueline
    Women Give 2018 asks how parents transmit generosity to their children and whether this differs for sons and daughters. The study first explores the linkage between whether parents give to charitable organizations and whether their adult children give. It then examines frequency and amount of parental giving as well as the parents’ wealth level to assess how these factors relate to charitable giving by the adult children.