Growing up in Africa. Age and pro-social attitudes in primary schoolchildren in Goma (DRC)

While an extensive literature based on analysis conducted in developed countries\r\nshows that primary school children develop prosocial attitudes as they grow\r\nolder with the school acting as the main driver of the socialisation process, there is\r\nlittle evidence of what may happen in very different socio-cultural and economic\r\ncontext. The paper aims at testing the relation between age and prosocial attitudes\r\nand behaviours by focusing on a sample of about 400 children attending 10 primary\r\nschools located in pheripheral areas of Goma, capital city of the North Kivu\r\nprovince in the northeast region of Democratic Republic of Congo. The evidence of\r\nbehavioural experiments shows that schoolchildren attitude to truthfully report\r\ntheir choices tend to decrease with age (i.e. cheating increases); we also explore the\r\nrelationship between other prosocial attitudes and age, finding mixed and weak\r\nevidence.