ArticlePNAS nexus2025
Greater income and financial well-being are associated with higher prosocial preferences and behaviors across 76 countries.
Article in PNAS nexus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Humans are more prosocial in poor foraging environments.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The co-occurrence of ingroup and outgroup prosociality across 121 societies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Social comparison and segregation reveal well-being traps.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2026Article
- Behavioural public policy should take the psychology of poverty into account.Communications psychology · 2025Review
- Adults with more severe psychopathy in the community show increased social discounting.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Quantifying and explaining the rise of fiction.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Prosocial preferences and behaviors-defined as those that benefit others-are essential for health, well-being, and a society that can effectively respond to global challenges. Identifying factors that may increase or decrease them is therefore critical. Wealth, in the form of income or subjective financial well-being (FWB), may be crucial in determining prosociality. In addition, individuals' experience of precarity (inability to meet basic needs) or country-specific factors could change how wealth correlates with prosociality, yet this impact is unknown. Here, we tested how self-reported household income (HHI) and FWB were associated with seven measures of prosociality in a global, representative sample of 80,337 people across 76 countries. We show a consistent positive association between wealth and prosociality, across both measures and for both financial and nonfinancial prosocial preferences and behaviors. HHI was positively associated with altruism, positive reciprocity, donating money, volunteering, and helping a stranger, but negatively associated with trust. FWB was positively associated with all aspects of prosociality, including trust. Individuals' experience of precarity reduced the strength of wealth associations for prosocial preferences but increased them for prosocial behaviors. Positive associations between wealth and prosociality were found around the world and across country-level wealth and cultural factors. These findings could have important implications for enhancing prosociality, critical for a healthy and adaptive society.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.