The purpose of this study is to investigate the altruistic motives of homereared,rninstitutionalized and street chi ldren. The variations in altruistic motivesrnbecause of the differences in sex, age, grade and religiosity are also treated.rn216 subjects were randomly selected fTom the three types of residence. Equalrnnumbers of male and female subj ects were taken from each res idence. The age ofrnthe subjects range from IO-ISyears and their educational level range from illiteratesrnto 9th grade. Pro-social Motivation Questionnaire and Religiosity Scale werernadopted for the purpose of this study. The pro-social Motivation Questionnaire hasrnhedonism, self-orientation, conformity, task-orientation, other-orientation andrnempathy sub scales, which were applied to measure altruistic behavior. Thernreligiosity scale has belief, ritual and knowledge dimensions, which were used tornmeasure the involvement of an individual in a particular religion.rnDescriptive statistics, intercorrelation of variables, analys is of variance,rnstepwise regression and Scheffe's multiple comparison tests were applied to analyzernthe data.rnThe findings of the study revealed that, home-reared children are morernaltruistic than institutionalized children, which in turn are more altruistic than streetrnchildren. Females are more altruistic than males. In addition to this, the older andrnhigh-grade level children are more altruistic than the younger and low-grade levelrnchildren. More over, the more religious children are more altruistic than ch ildrenrnwith low religiosity.rnFinally, awareness education to the parents, trainings to the caregivers ofrnchildren's institutions and reunification of street children by concerned bodies arernrecommended to improve the altruistic behaviors of children.