Abstract

Religious giving has been argued to be different compared to non-religious giving, because it influences after-life consumption while contributions to non-religious organizations are irrelevant to after-life consumption. The study herein examines this theoretical argument by investigating the relationships between age and religious and non-religious giving using the data of the Survey of Social Development Trends from Taiwan. From categorized contributions, this study estimates the effects of age, income, and price of giving on religious, charitable, academic, medical, and political contributions, as well as on the probability of providing volunteer work and the frequency of religious participation. The findings suggest that the positive relationships between age and the level of giving are stronger for religious and charitable giving while the positive effects of age on academic and medical giving are much weaker, and there is no significant relationship between age and political giving. That is, religious giving and charitable giving are closely related to after-life consumption, but the effects of age on academic giving and medical giving are considerably different. Moreover, older people are more likely to provide volunteer work and attend more religious activities than younger individuals. Contributions to religious and charitable groups are positively related to contributions to academic, medical, and political organizations.