Charitable Contributions of Time and Money: A Multivariate Sample Selection Approach

Abstract

In this paper, we estimate a sample-selection system of equations in a joint analysis of volunteering, religious giving, and secular giving using data on working households from the 2005 Center on Philanthropy Panel Study and Panel Study on Income Dynamics. Estimated tax price elasticities suggest that changes in the tax treatment of charitable contributions could lead to substantial reductions in monetary donations. For example, replacing the deduction with a 12 percent tax credit available to all tax filers in 2005 would have increased religious and secular contributions from working households by 7.7 and 3.8 percent, respectively.