We present a new model of charitable giving where individuals regard out-of-pocket donations and the matches they induce as different. We show that match-price elasticities combine conventional price effects with the strength of warm glow, so that a match-price elasticity alone is insufficient to characterize preferences for giving. Match- and rebate-price elasticities will be different, but together they lead to new tests of underlying giving preferences. We estimate, for the first time, a match-price elasticity in a high-stakes setting together with a rebate elasticity induced by tax policy. The estimates reject extant models of giving but are consistent with the new theory.

Recently economists have begun to consider the causes and consequences of religious participation. An unanswered question in this literature is the effect upon individuals of changes in the opportunity cost of religious participation. In this paper we identify a policy-driven change in the opportunity cost of religious participation based on state laws that prohibit retail activity on Sunday, known as “blue laws.” Many states have repealed these laws in recent years, raising the opportunity cost of religious participation. We use a variety of data sets to show that when a state repeals its blue laws religious attendance falls and that church donations and spending fall as well. These results do not seem to be driven by declines in religiosity prior to the law change, nor do we see comparable declines in membership in or giving to nonreligious organizations after a state repeals its laws. We then assess the effects of changes in these laws on drinking and drug use behavior in the NLSY. We find that repealing blue laws leads to an increase in drinking and drug use and that this increase is found only among the initially religious individuals who were affected by the blue laws. The effect is economically significant; for example, the gap in heavy drinking between religious and nonreligious individuals falls by about half after the laws are repealed.

Season of birth is associated with later outcomes; what drives this association remains unclear. We consider a new explanation: variation in maternal characteristics. We document large changes in maternal characteristics for births throughout the year; winter births are disproportionally realized by teenagers and the unmarried. Family background controls explain nearly half of season-of-birth's relation to adult outcomes. Seasonality in maternal characteristics is driven by women trying to conceive; we find no seasonality among unwanted births. Prior seasonality-in-fertility research focuses on conditions at conception; here expected conditions at birth drive variation in maternal characteristics while conditions at conception are unimportant.

This paper considers how oral contraception's diffusion to young unmarried women affected the number and parental characteristics of children born to these women. In the short-term, pill access caused declines in fertility and increases in both the share of children born with low birthweight and the share born to poor households. In the long-term, access led to negligible changes in fertility while increasing the share of children with college-educated mothers and decreasing the share with divorced mothers. The short-term effects appear to be driven by upwardly-mobile women opting out of early childbearing while the long-term effects appear to be driven by a retiming of births to later ages. These effects differ from those of abortion legalization, although we find suggestive evidence that pill diffusion lowered abortions. Our results suggest that abortion and the pill are on average used for different purposes by different women, but on the margin some women substitute from abortion towards the pill when both are available. JELNo. I0, J13, N12.

Abstract Governments have used vouchers to spend billions of dollars on private education; much of this has gone to religiously affiliated schools. We explore the possibility that vouchers could alter the financial outcomes of religious organizations that are operating schools and thus have an impact on the spiritual, moral, and social fabric of communities. Using a data set of Catholic parish finances from Milwaukee, we show that vouchers are a dominant source of funding for many churches. Vouchers appear to offer financial stability for congregations as voucher expansion prevents church closures and mergers. However, voucher expansion causes significant declines in church donations and church revenue from noneducational sources.