Pandemic generosity to the fore

THE Covid-19 pandemic has not been all panic buying and quarantine skipping, with international researchers finding people in the US were more likely to give more to charity when their county was under threat from the virus.

The researchers used charity data to measure donations from before and during the pandemic, and found charity spend increased in March and April 2020 compared with the same time in 2019.

In another test, researchers looked at the results of 1000 people playing a game where they had to choose how to split $10 between themselves and a randomly allocated partner.

Where there was a Covid-19 threat, the researchers say, the participants were more generous.