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Amanda Chuan, Anya Samek

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We conducted a field experiment with a charitable group to investigate whether giving the donor an option to write a personal message to the recipient influences giving behavior. Over 1,500 households were approached in a door-to-door campaign and randomized to either a control or a treatment in which donors could include a card for the recipient. We predict that treatment should increase contributions through making the gift more meaningful, but may also decrease contribution rate by increasing the social or other cost of donating. We find evidence in favor of the cost effect, and no evidence of increased giving.

Amanda Chuan, John A List, Anya Samek

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Research has shown that giving disadvantaged families financial incentives to invest in their children could decrease socioeconomic inequality by enhancing human capital formation. Yet, within the household how are such gains achieved? We use a field experiment to investigate how parents allocate time when they receive financial incentives. We find that incentives increase investment in the target child. But, parents achieve these gains by substituting away from time spent with the child's sibling(s). An unintended consequence is that intrahousehold inequality increases and aggregate gains from the program are overstated when focusing only on target children.

Amanda Chuan, John A List, Anya Samek, Shreemayi Samujjwala

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Parental investments shape children's educational specializations. Using a longitudinal study, we find that parents invest more in daughters than sons at ages 3-5. We find that early parental investment can explain persistently higher English scores for girls than boys 4-6 years later. However, there is no gender gap in Math. Parental investments at ages 3-5 appear to contribute to girls' advantage in English but have little impact on Math. Our results suggest that parental investments at early ages contributes to girls' comparative advantage in English.