Government assistance and family charitable giving: Comparing urban and rural residents in China

Using data from the 2016 China Family Panel Studies, this paper examines the relationship between government assistance, urban/rural residency, and charitable giving. The results indicate that urban/rural residency moderates the relationship between government assistance and charitable giving in China. Urban residents who do not receive government assistance are much more likely to donate to charity than their rural counterparts. While urban residents with government assistance also show a higher likelihood of giving than government assistance recipients in the rural area, the difference is much smaller than that between the urban and rural non-recipients. More interestingly, the results show that although urban residents without government assistance donate more to charity, those who receive a high amount of government assistance on average donate less to charity than their rural counterparts.