Terrorism and altruistic giving

Evidence from child sponsorship

Bibliographic Data

ID24227456
AuthorsAlberto Posso (0000-0003-4226-7072), Simon Feeny (0000-0002-5955-0045)
Year2027
Volume185
Pages103951
Publication date2027-02-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Development Economics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0304-3878 • E-ISSN: 1872-6089
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.jdeveco.2026.103951
OpenAlexW7220920745
LanguageEN
References cited35

We study how terrorist attacks targeting educational institutions affect private development aid through child sponsorship. Conceptually, terrorist events may increase sponsorship by signaling greater need or reduce it if affected communities are seen as less effective destinations to support. We combine global administrative data from Plan International on child sponsorship across 50 countries over the 2008-2018 period, aggregated at the Primary Sampling Unit (PSU) level, with geocoded terrorism events from the Global Terrorism Database. Our core specification focuses on attacks against educational institutions within 20 km of each PSU. We estimate the causal effect using a heterogeneity-robust difference-in-differences approach suited to staggered, non-absorbing treatments. We find that attacks on educational institutions reduce the share of sponsored children by about 3 percentage points, a 4 percent decline relative to the mean. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest this corresponds to funding losses of approximately US$615,000 across affected communities over the study period. Since sponsorship is geographically targeted, these losses fall on the specific communities, underscoring the need to buffer local development funding against security shocks.

altruistic giving · charitable giving · child sponsorship · donor behavior · Terrorism · International Development and Aid · Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

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