| Abstract | Corporate philanthropy has attracted a lot of attention from society and is a hot issue in finance research, especially after the pass of The Charity Law of the People’s Republic of China recently. By using the donation data of listed firms in 2006-2014, we investigate how a CEO’s early-life poverty experience affects corporate philanthropy, as well as how the exogenous shock of natural disasters affects this relationship. The results show that, firstly, firms with CEOs born in poverty counties or grown up during “Great Famine” donate more to the society. Secondly, after the Wenchuan Earthquake, there is much more increase in corporate donation for firms whose CEOs have poverty experience, indicating that the external shock of natural disasters could deeply touch the hearts of CEOs with poverty experience. These findings remain robust after controlling for the potential selective bias, adopting propensity score matching and placebo tests, conducting dynamic comparison of CEOs’ turnover, as well as using alternative variable measurements and different samples. Further analyses find that CEOs born in affluent areas do not outperform in corporate philanthropy. In addition, well-educated CEOs with poverty experience donate more to the society; however, political connections do not affect the relationships between early poverty experience of CEOs and corporate donations. Finally, the philanthropy decisions made by CEOs with poverty experience can enhance firms’ performance. The paper not only contributes to the literature on the motivation of corporate donation, but also has practical implications for firms to fulfil their social responsibility so as to achieve social common development. |