- Author: Dean Spears
- Published in: Economic Development and Cultural Change
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Abstract
People give more to the identified victim because they feel sympathy for her plight, but the statistical victim evokes no such emotion. However, emotional reactions to others are notalways sympathetic. This suggests an interaction between identifiability and social hierarchy: the reaction to identifiable victims is motivated by sympathy, but members of low-ranking groups in need often do not evoke sympathy. Our article extends this literature by studying the market for charitable giving within a developing country, and particularly in a society that has been historically stratified through a complex hierarchy of castes. Formerly “untouchable” groups—referred to as “scheduled castes” (SCs) or “Dalits”— remain stigmatized, low ranking, and subject to deep social and economic exclusion. However, the continuing importance of caste prejudice and discrimination in “modern” India is seriously debated among scholars and policy makers. Therefore, experimental evidence on how caste shapes attitudes of Indians in economic decisions would be important information.
We study how caste and religious identities in contemporary India interact with the identifiable victim effect: does identifiability encourage donations to low-ranking out-groups? We conduct three randomized experiments with educated, computer-using Indian participants. In order to learn about modern Indian society, we target a special set of participants: our participants use English-language websites, but in the 2005 India Human Development Survey, less than 1% of Indian households owned a computer. In the same survey, only 7% of 8–11-year-old children chose to take a reading test in English, rather than another language.