Charity and the Bequest Motive : Evidence from Seventeenth

This paper researches the motivations for charitable bequests by looking at gifts to the poor in the wills of 1357 testators who died in Suffolk, England in the 1620’s and 1630’s. I find that wealth, religiosity, and the presence of family and friends influence testator generosity. The findings that wealthier, more religious individuals, and those with fewer children give more to the poor support an altruistic model of testator utility. However, the finding that individuals who give to more people outside of their immediate families are more likely to give to the poor contradicts the simple altruism model. This result is shown to be consistent with a model that suggests that charitable giving is partly driven by the approbation friends and families grant charitable behavior. To the poor of wheresoever it shall please God to call me to him 13s 4d. To the brother minister who preaches a sermon 10s. I make these 2 bequests not for any superstitious ends for they are ever hateful to my soul, but the first I give in testimony of my faith how ready I should have been, the Lord so enabling me, to have given to the poor in true need. The other I make not for any profit to me then a carcase, but for the good of my brethern and sisters then living that they might remember their short and ensuing end. -John Sharpe of Wickham Skeith, clerk, 1637 By the poore therefore in this place, is understood the poore of the parish where the Testator did dwell and keep house; for it is likely that he did beare a great affection to the poore where he dwelled. -Swinburne “A Breife Treatise of Testaments and Last Wils,” 1635