As Wealthy Give Smaller Share of Income to Charity, Middle Class Digs Deeper
By Alex Daniels
As the recession lifted, poor and middle class Americans dug deeper into their wallets to give to charity, even though they were earning less. At the same time, according to a new Chronicle analysis of tax data, wealthy Americans earned more, but the portion of the income they gave to charity declined.
Using the IRS data, The Chronicle was able to track gifts to charity at the state, county, metropolitan-area, and ZIP code levels. The data were for gifts to charity among taxpayers who itemize deductions on their tax forms. It captured $180-billion that was given to charity in 2012, or about 80 percent of the total amount given to charity as tabulated by "Giving USA."
The Chronicle study found that Americans give, on average, about 3 percent of their income to charity, a figure that has not budged significantly for decades. However, that figure belies big differences in giving patterns between the rich and the poor.
The wealthiest Americans—those who earned $200,000 or more—reduced the share of income they gave to charity by 4.6 percent from 2006 to 2012. Meanwhile, Americans who earned less than $100,000 chipped in 4.5 percent more of their income during the same time period. Middle- and lower-income Americans increased the share of income they donated to charity, even as they earned less, on average, than they did six years earlier.
Charities, however, are still looking to high-income donors for support.
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http://philanthropy.com/article/As-Wealthy-Give-Smaller-Share/149191/
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tuhaybey
(76 posts)Forget about charitable contributions, I'd settle for the rich even just paying the people whose work makes them rich a reasonable portion of the value their employees create for them. Consider- how the share of worker productivity that goes to workers has changed since 1950. Or even just look at how workers' productivity is divided up today.
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)Because if they are, right-wing white evangelical Christians seem awful "generous" compared to a lot of other people....
Oh, Utah is the most generous state? 17 most generous states voted for Mitt Romney?
Yeah, this study is highly dubious at best.
It's interesting to consider, though, that a lot of the states and areas that are both poorer and have higher levels of overall religiosity don't have much public investment (whether due to lack of resources or in the case of the red states, due to deliberate under-investment).
In areas with less investment in the common good from the local or state government, religious organizations can fill the void. But they aren't equipped to handle everything-far from it.
tuhaybey
(76 posts)To be fair, some portion of donations to religious organizations ARE charity. For example, churches often provide soup kitchens or fund famine relief in the third world or free medical care and so forth. But, the bulk of whatever a person donates at their church usually just goes to covering the costs of their church. Not that that is a bad thing, but it's paying for services that they themselves consume, which is more like membership dues in a social club or something than charity. Also, "religious organizations" is too broad of a category to cut out of the analysis because that includes both religiously affiliated charities (which clearly should count) and donations to one's own church (only a small portion of which should count).
Unfortunately, I've never seen an analysis that tries to slice that up correctly. They tend to either include all religious donations or exclude all religious donations, neither of which seems correct to me. If you exclude all religious donations, liberals come out way ahead. When you include all religious donations, conservatives come out way ahead. Another way to do it is to include religious donations, but also to include non-religious self-enlightenment type things like amounts paid to symphonies and art museums and whatnot as sort of an analog to donations to one's own church, and then liberals are on top again. Really though, I would like to see somebody actually dig in and include the portion of religious donations that go to charitable activities, but not other religious donations. Unfortunately, I've never seen one that does that.
