Socially responsible investments among parents and adult children

Novel evidence is provided of a positive correlation between parents' and their children's socially responsible mutual fund investment behavior. Although captured parent-child correlations reflect contemporary relationships, they reveal potentially important insight into the origin of heterogeneity in individuals' prosocial behavior. Consistent with research on socialization, the results suggest an influence from both parents, stronger for mothers, and reinforced for parents both investing in socially responsible mutual funds. Parental resources during an individual's adolescence (financial and parental life experience) are further found to significantly explain individuals' adult prosocial investment behavior. The results are robust to conditioning on a number of alternative explanations. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.