The Surprising Childhood Roots of a Generous Life

What makes someone generous when they grow up? Researchers asked this question using survey data from over 200,000 people across 22 countries. They looked at 11 different childhood experiences (like how close people felt to their parents, whether their family struggled financially, if they experienced abuse, whether they felt like an outsider, and how often they attended religious services at age 12) to see which ones lined up with two generous behaviors in adulthood: donating money to charity and helping strangers.

Some of the most generous adults were those who faced significant hardship and felt like outsiders as children.

Some findings were expected. People who attended religious services more often as kids tended to give and help more as adults. Those who grew up in families that lived comfortably financially were a bit more likely to donate to charity later. And people who had a good relationship with their father gave a little more to charity.

But other findings were surprising. People who experienced physical or sexual abuse as children were actually more likely to give to charity and help strangers as adults, not less. The same was true for people who felt like outsiders in their own families growing up. Researchers think this might reflect something called "altruism born of suffering": when people who go through hard times develop deeper empathy and a stronger desire to help others. Another interesting pattern: charitable giving went up with age, but helping strangers went down after age 60.

This may be because older adults have more money to give but less physical mobility to help people they don't know. The results also varied a lot by country. Something that predicted generosity in one place sometimes had the opposite effect somewhere else. For example, having divorced parents was linked to more charitable giving in Germany and India, but less giving in the United States and Israel. Overall, the study suggests that generosity in adulthood has many roots in childhood, and some of those roots are surprising. Both positive experiences, like attending religious services, and painful ones, like feeling left out, may shape whether we give and help later in life.