Donations, risk attitudes and time preferences: A study on altruism in primary school children

•We study the relationship of patience and risk preferences with altruism in children.•We examine further determinants of altruism such as age, gender, IQ and siblings.•We find a nonlinear influence of risk and time preferences on altruistic behavior.•We replicate prior findings: altruism is related to age, gender, number of siblings.•We use experimental tasks to elicit altruism, risk and time preferences. We study in a sample of 1070 primary school children, aged seven to eleven years, how altruism in a donation experiment is related to children's risk attitudes and intertemporal choices. Examining such a relationship is motivated by theories of reciprocal altruism that provide a cornerstone for understanding human social behavior. We find that higher risk tolerance and patience in intertemporal choice increase, in general, the level of donations, albeit the effects are non-linear. We confirm earlier results that altruism increases with age during childhood and that girls are more altruistic than boys. Having older brothers makes subjects less altruistic.