Charitable behaviour and political affiliation: Evidence for the UK

Abstract

We explore the effect of political party alignment on the likelihood of undertaking charitable behaviour, as captured by making monetary donations and volunteering, as well as on the amount of money donated and the number of hours volunteered. Using data from the most recent large scale UK household longitudinal survey, this is one of the first studies to explore the relationship between political affiliation and charitable behaviour using panel data. Being affiliated to the Labour Party relative to being affiliated to the Conservative Party (the most right wing political party in our analysis) is negatively associated with both the probability of donating money to charity and the proportion of income donated to charity. In contrast, these effects are found to be positive in the case of the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party. With respect to volunteering, we find that, whilst affiliations with the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats relative to being affiliated to the Conservative Party are negatively associated with the probability of being a volunteer, affiliations with the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats are positively associated with the number of hours volunteered conditional on being a volunteer.