Gender Wage Gap, Bargaining Power, and Charitable Giving of Households

We show that gender-specific labor market conditions significantly affect married couples’ charitable giving in the United States. Using Bartik-style wage measures, we find that when potential relative female wages increase by 1 percentage point, households’ charitable giving share out of family income increases by 2.2%. The impact from a 1 standard deviation change in relative wages for couples with given education and races is comparable to the implied effect of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which changed donation incentives significantly. Moreover, contributions to religious organizations, favored by women, increase when relative wages rise. Our results are consistent with household bargaining explanations.