71. Women, Men, and Money

Welcome back to Spend Donate Invest. This is where we talk about ways we can line up our values in terms of the world we’d like to build and we try to line those values up with what we’re doing with our money. I’m talking about where we invest, where we save our money, and how we spend our money. If you ever have something you’re thinking about, please drop a note and your topic might get selected for a future episode. I’ll share the email address at the end of the show.

Today we are going to wrap up women’s month by talking about women and money. Specifically women and giving. I’m going to be drawing on research from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University. I’ll include links to the research so you can read more into this if you want to do a deep dive. I’m just here to start the conversation today lol

So first things first, I’m the realest. Shout out to Iggy Azalea. Every time I hear the expression “first things first” I think about that song lyric. So first things first, women are the realest. The overall conclusions of the research is that women’s wealth is growing- today women hold 40% of global wealth, women are more likely to give, and women tend to give for different reasons compared to men. 

The first bit of research that they share is about women across generations. Younger women tend to have more influence on household giving than older women. But across all generations, women give more than men. Young men, middle aged men, old men, at every single stage in life, women give more.

And what’s the motivation for the giving? The research found that women give based on their empathy for others. Being able to empathize with what people in their community are going through, or people on the other side of the world. Perfect strangers. Women are more likely than men to give to:

International causes, community causes, religious causes, health care, and youth and family issues. 

Men on the other hand, according to the research, men give out of self interest. How will it help them?

And that leads to another interesting thing I saw in their research. Women are more likely to give away money AND also look for ways to line up their investments with their values through impact investing. That’s something we talk a lot about on this show. Impact investing can mean taking out climate destroyers or other companies whose values don’t line up with yours, taking those companies out of your investment portfolio. It might also mean adding in companies that are proactively trying to do things that line up with your values. So that’s impact investing. Women tend to do it in conjunction with straight up giving money away to people who need help.

Men tend to do impact investing instead of giving money away. We talked about self interest being at the heart of men’s relationship with their money and this too lines up with that.

There’s some research that women like giving collectively. And men are more likely to donate when they perceive that other people are giving. 

Single men feel the greatest satisfaction when they become donors at any level. Women feel more satisfaction when they increase the level of giving. That’s also true for married couples, presumably we are talking about heterosexual marriages here, I don’t know that they have refreshed the data now that marriage has become more accessible in the US. The research is showing that married couples also feel more satisfaction when they increase the level of giving.

In general, people tend to keep their giving levels pretty consistent, even after retirement- sometimes there is a little dip right at retirement but then it quickly rebounds and people resume the same level of giving this is true for married couples, this is also true for single women. It is not true for single men. Single men give way less in retirement and they report that’s because they are saving it to spend on travel and recreation. On the other hand, single women and married women say that they are inspired to give as part of their family legacy, they are inspired by the long standing traditions of giving in their families.

For all of the people studied, men, women, single, married, for all of the people studied, the more money they give away, the higher their life satisfaction. I don’t know if they controlled for income when they did this analysis, but based on other studies we’ve discussed on this show before, check out episode 65 celebrating Black Philanthropy, I would be willing to bet this finding, that life satisfaction increases when people give away more money is probably true at all income levels.

So those are the highlights of the research that I’m going to link in the show notes. It’s fascinating. Let me know what you were surprised by. If there’s another topic you’re interested in, feel free to email me a note anytime, that’s where these show topics come from for the most part, you send me messages on what you’re interested in, and I try to put something together. The email address for the show is spend donate invest at gmail dot com. That’s also how you can get onto the mailing list for the monthlyish newsletter.

Welcome to all the new listeners, I hope you enjoy it here. Please send this episode to someone who you think might find this research on men, women, and giving interesting. It turns out that word of mouth is still how most people discover podcasts, so if you’re into what this podcast is trying to do, please share an episode. If you don’t know which podcast platform your friend or colleague uses, you can send them an episode link directly from the show’s website. It is spend donate invest dot world. 

That’s all for today, let’s talk again soon.

https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/institutes/womens-philanthropy-institute/research/index.html