Vol.:(0123456789) Social Indicators Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-018-2029-6 1 3 Does Inequality Cause a Diference in Altruism Between the Rich and the Poor? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment Yen‑Sheng Chiang 1  · Jacqueline Chen Chen 2 Accepted: 9 November 2018 © Springer Nature B.V. 2018 Abstract Increasing research evidence indicates that economic inequality leads the rich to be less generous than the poor. While compelling, the underling mechanism of the fnding remains elusive. We conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate how inequality infuences peo- ple’s behavior in a sharing game. We test varying causes of inequality to see how people share payofs with others when inequality is caused respectively by chance, competition, and choice. The experiment result shows that the rich give less than the poor only when inequality is self-chosen. Yet, diferent from fndings in previous studies, increasing ine- quality does not reinforce, but instead mitigates the negative relationship of income and giving. Our study suggests that research on the consequences of inequality should be care- ful on discerning whether self-choice of inequality could account for the spurious efect of inequality on people’s prosocial behavior. Keywords Inequality · Altruism · Competition · Self-selection · Experimentation 1 Introduction Inequality attracts signifcant attention in both the media and social science research. Con- cerns about proliferating inequality are raised in academic work, shared in social media, and discussed in public debates. Inequality is a pressing concern to a wide variety of peo- ple—from lay persons to political fgures—because it not only signals injustice in the allo- cation of resources, but also foreshadows many kinds of social problems, ranging from ris- ing crimes (Daly 2016; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009; Williams et al. 2012) to deteriorating public health (Babones 2008; Wilkinson and Pickett 2006; Subramanian and Kawachi 2004) to weakening community solidarity (Kawachi et al. 1997; Lancee and Van de Werfhorst * Yen-Sheng Chiang chiangys@gate.sinica.edu.tw * Jacqueline Chen Chen 1 Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan, Republic of China 2 Department of Sociology, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China