Buddy Can You Spare A Dime?
You might want to ask that question, should you ever need to, in a red state, not a blue one. George Will notes something that I have posted about before: left-leaning people tend to be parsimonious when it comes to charity.
Sixteen months ago, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, published "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism." The surprise is that liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives.
If many conservatives are liberals who have been mugged by reality, Brooks, a registered independent, is, as a reviewer of his book said, a social scientist who has been mugged by data. They include these findings:
Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).
Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.
Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.
Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.
In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.
People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.
That last point is the real driver of course. If the left thinks government must take care of those less well off, they feel no obligation to help out themselves. Never mind that if the government is involved, huge amount of money will be wasted and bureaucratic bloat will set in, using more and more of the money to pay for people to administer the programs - cutting the amount really available for the various programs.
By Sam Wah, Thursday, 27 March , 2008 @ 7:41 am
That was the point I was going to make, before I read to the bottom and found it already made.
By Al, Thursday, 27 March , 2008 @ 8:49 am
Great Post Gaius - some nice hard figures to tout at the left.
By C Stanley, Thursday, 27 March , 2008 @ 9:33 am
I’ve heard a rebuttal argument to this, though, that much of the disparity would go away if you factored out church donations. And I think there’s something to that, since I know of many evangelical families in my Bible belt region who give pretty heavily to megachurches, and I’m dubious about how charitable that is when a lot of money seems to be going to building ginormous places of worship and running programs like youth basketball and cheerleading (for the members of the church, not for poor inner city kids.)I’m on the conservative side of this argument, so I’d like to think that’s not the only factor that drives up the numbers for red staters, but it has a ring of truth to it. On the other hand, of course, a good bit of the money that’s put into the church offering really does go to charitable causes, so I don’t think it possible to factor this kind of giving out. I’m just curious if anyone has ever seen a breakdown of church vs. nonchurch charitable giving, or if there’s any way to know on average what percentage of all church offerings go toward charitable missions rather than administrative costs?
By martian, Thursday, 27 March , 2008 @ 12:59 pm
C Stanley, I’m with you. I’m on the conservative side of this also, but I would like to see how much of that money is going to mega-churches and TV Evangelists. I have my doubts that much of the money going to those entities ever makes it into the hands of those who really need it - much more likely ends up in someone’s pocket, real estate, etc.
By T-Mac, Thursday, 27 March , 2008 @ 1:51 pm
I wonder what else conservatives give more of ? Through volunteering (protests don’t count), service to their country etc.
By Mwalimu Daudi, Thursday, 27 March , 2008 @ 2:30 pm
I know of many evangelical families in my Bible belt region who give pretty heavily to megachurches, and I’m dubious about how charitable that is when a lot of money seems to be going to building ginormous places of worship and running programs like youth basketball and cheerleading (for the members of the church, not for poor inner city kids.)
On the other hand, how much money from liberals goes to global warming cultists, hate groups like the NAACP and the ACLU, and other organizations that are charitable only if one radically stretches the meaning of "charity"? It seems to me that this is a sword that cuts both ways.
By C Stanley, Thursday, 27 March , 2008 @ 3:32 pm
Mwalimu: Yeah, I’m with you on that, but I think it could get too nitpicking to try to see how many charities for right leaning causes and charities for left leaning causes would cancel each other out- and I do feel that the church giving might be a big enough segment that it should be considered separately, if one could separate out the part that goes toward aid for poor, etc, from the noncharitable parts of it. I mean, certainly there are the Soros types but there aren’t that many of them, while there really are a ton of Christian conservatives who tithe.
By Quilly Mammoth, Thursday, 27 March , 2008 @ 5:58 pm
Martian,I head a Christian household and we give a mite over 10%. None of it goes to a MegaChurch. I also am a Congregational Champion for the Thrivent Habitat for Humanity builds in my city. Which is time not money, but at my rate of pay that’s fairly substantial. MegaChurch are impressive in their size, but compared to the overall Christian population in The Heartland they do not make a large percentage of Christian giving.People talk about, for example, Dallas Megachurches which have 20,000 members. However there are like 10 million Christians in the DFW area.
By class-factotum, Friday, 28 March , 2008 @ 7:34 am
I read the book recently. Conservatives give more to non-church charities than liberals do. They also volunteer more time.
One example the writer gave was the difference in donations to the Salvation Army bell ringer between San Francisco and somewhere in S. Dakota.
"He needn’t have worried. “Turns out twice as many people passed the kettle in San Francisco and [the ringers] got half as much money,” Brooks says."
http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/perspective/Spr07_charity.asp
By martian, Friday, 28 March , 2008 @ 11:44 am
QM, I understand where you’re coming from and I salute you and others like you for the contributions you give. However, Mega-churches must be getting huge amounts of money from somewhere just to become mega-churches with multi-million dollar real estate holdings, ministers who live on multi-million dollar estates, etc. My point is that they may well be a disproportionate percentage of over-all money collections just to become what they are. Then you add in the TV Evangelists that I also mentioned - those guys get a lot of money from elderly people and shut-ins who can’t attend regular churches and they siphon off a pretty good sized chunk of charitable giving, as well. Seeing as how the mega-churches appear to be fairly cash flush and TV Evangelists all tend to live pretty well, too, I’m just wondering how much of the money donated to these entities only actually makes it into the hands of the needy. I am not questioning all church related charity, just the charitable donations to those who appear to be fairly conspicuous consumers.