A substantial body of research suggests that economists are less generous than other professionals and that economics students are less generous than other students. We address this question using administrative data on donations to social programs by students at the University of Washington. Our data set allows us to track student donations and economics training over time in order to distinguish selection effects from indoctrination effects. We find that economics majors are less likely to donate than other students and that there is an indoctrination effect for non-majors but not for majors. Women majors and non-majors are less likely to contribute than comparable men.
Personally, I think I became less generous since studying economics in small part because it taught me that selfishness is not inherently bad but mostly because I now have a greater appreciation of incentives and trade-offs. Rarely will I give money away in the form of a hand out; microloans are about as charitable as I get. But for reasons similar to those mentioned in this post, I think investing is possibly the best way to do social good.
