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 shows that primary school children develop prosocial attitudes as they grow older with the school acting as the main driver of the socialisation process, there is little evidence of what may happen in very different socio-cultural and economic context. The paper aims at testing the relation between age and prosocial attitudes and behaviours by focusing on a sample of about 400 children attending 10 primary schools located in pheripheral areas of Goma, capital city of the North Kivu province in the northeast region of Democratic Republic of Congo. The evidence of behavioural experiments shows that schoolchildren attitude to truthfully report their choices tend to decrease with age (i.e. cheating increases); we also explore the relationship between other prosocial attitudes and age, finding mixed and weak evidence.