Lost letter measure of variation in altruistic behaviour in 20 neighbourhoods

Abstract

Altruistic behaviour varies across human populations and this variation is likely to be partly explained by variation in the ecological context of the populations. We hypothesise that area level socio-economic characteristics will determine the levels of altruism found in individuals living in an area and we use a lost letter experiment to measure altruism across 20 neighbourhoods with a wide range of income deprivation scores in London, UK. The results show a strong negative effect of neighbourhood income deprivation on altruistic behaviour, with letters dropped in the poorest neighbourhoods having 91% lower odds of being returned than letters dropped in the wealthiest neighbourhoods. We suggest that measures of altruism are strongly context dependant.

Figure 1. Plot of the predicted probability of a letter being returned by the level of neighbourhood income deprivation score.

This measure is a composite index of the proportion of the population experiencing deprivation related to low income and has been divided into 4 quartiles, with the higher the score the more deprived the neighbourhood. This relationship is controlled for house values on the street where the letter was dropped, population density, percentage of UK born individuals, number of post boxes and average distance travelled to work in the neighbourhood. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.