Zunyuan Zheng: Cancer Experience and Charitable Giving

Abstract

Essay I: While the impact of health shocks and the factors influencing charitable giving have been widely studied, research that combines the two topics, especially focusing on a specific disease, is limited. Using a staggered treatment setup and Swedish register data, this study examines “ingroup altruism born of suffering”: whether cancer patients are more likely to donate to cancer charities and if they donate more. The results show a significant increase in the probability of donating to cancer charities after a diagnosis. Conversely, donations to non-cancer health charities decline, whereas donations to non-health charities remain unaffected. Overall, charitable giving increases. Additionally, donations to cancer charities continue to grow after diagnosis, but the growth rate decreases over time. The dynamic pattern of the decrease in giving to non-cancer health charities is more stable. These patterns hold when analyzing the log-transformed donation amounts.

Essay II: Witnessing a familiar person undergoing adversities can evoke empathy toward people with similar problems. Using Swedish register data, this study examines how a family member’s cancer diagnosis and death due to cancer influences individual giving to cancer charities. I differentiate between immediate and extended family members. I find that familial cancer generally increases giving to cancer charities, with a bigger response following a family member’s death than a diagnosis. Meanwhile, cancer affecting immediate family members leads to a larger increase in giving compared to cancer affecting extended family members. The impact of a familial cancer diagnosis on charitable giving generally remains stable over time. However, the effect of an immediate family member’s death from cancer shows a clear decreasing trend. In contrast, the influence of an extended family member’s death remains stable for the first two years post-cancer but diminishes by the third year. Donations to non-cancer charities are not affected.

Essay III: This study explores charitable bequests, a less examined form of individual charitable giving compared to donations made during one’s lifetime. Specifically, I use death due to cancer as an indicator of end-of-life cancer experience until death and investigate its impact on decisions to make charitable bequests to cancer charities in a Swedish context. I apply propensity score matching as my primary empirical strategy to address potential selection bias. The main analysis includes two distinct samples: an unrestricted sample and a specific subset of decedents without close family members. Results from the unrestricted sample show no significant effects, as charitable bequests by decedents with close family members, especially children and partners, are extremely rare. However, in the restricted sample, cancer-related deaths significantly increase both the probability and the size of bequests to cancer charities, while donations to other charity sectors remain unaffected.