Terrorism and altruistic giving: Evidence from child sponsorship
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We study how terrorist attacks targeting educational institutions affect private development aid through child sponsorship. Conceptually, terrorist events may increase sponsorship by signaling greater need or reduce it if affected communities are seen as less effective destinations to support. We combine global administrative data from Plan International on child sponsorship across 50 countries over the 2008-2018 period, aggregated at the Primary Sampling Unit (PSU) level, with geocoded terrorism events from the Global Terrorism Database. Our core specification focuses on attacks against educational institutions within 20 km of each PSU. We estimate the causal effect using a heterogeneity-robust difference-in-differences approach suited to staggered, non-absorbing treatments. We find that attacks on educational institutions reduce the share of sponsored children by about 3 percentage points, a 4 percent decline relative to the mean. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest this corresponds to funding losses of approximately US$615,000 across affected communities over the study period. Since sponsorship is geographically targeted, these losses fall on the specific communities, underscoring the need to buffer local development funding against security shocks.
Source: Journal of Development Economics
Authors: Alberto Posso, Simon Feeny
Institutions: Griffith University, RMIT University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,590
OpenAlex ID: W7220920745