Grandparents Matter: Perspectives on Intergenerational Altruism and a Pilot Intergenerational Public Good Experiment

Abstract

The development and use of long-lived public goods involve more than one demographic generation, leaving the classic literature on voluntary provisions partially unfit to explain complex phenomena such as welfare systems, climate policies and major infrastructure projects. This paper proposes an experimental approach that can be used to further investigate how a public good is produced by one generation of individuals while the next reaps its benefits. Within this framework the case of intergenerational public goods production is explained using a spillover rule, where a percentage of the public good produced in time t by experimental parents will integrate the endowment of their artefactual children in t + 1. A cascade mechanism allows also for the rebirth of three generations of players, mimicking the biological and anthropological mechanisms of gene transmission and intergenerational altruism. Experimental evidence shows that subjects who are prompted on their lineage membership tend to contribute more compared to those who are not included in a dynastic framework. More importantly, results reveal that the true dynastic background of individuals is a prominent influence in the levels of contribution towards public goods.