Breaking our arms patting ourselves on the back

The Giving USA Foundation at Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy has released it's 2006 estimates on charitable giving....

Giving USA 2007, a publication of the Giving USA Foundation that is researched and written at the Center on Philanthropy, covers estimated giving in 2006, which reached $295.02 billion, setting a new record. Giving is 2.2 percent of gross domestic product, remaining for another year above the 40-year average of 1.8 percent.

I was outraged that it was only 2.2 percent until I read further into a USA Today article about the story and found...

[Claire] Gaudiani, [a professor at NYU's Heyman Center for Philanthropy and author of The Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism] said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7%. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73%, while France, with a 0.14% rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany. [emphasis added]

It's still outrageous that it's only 2.2 percent (1.7% in Gaudiani's estimates), but it does put the numbers in better perspective in relation to the rest of the world.

That being said, 2.2 percent is really only acceptable if it's viewed with a morally relativistic framework. You have to remember, the Holocaust is rationalized by some, using moral relativism, so that's hardly a useful framework to base ethics on. A more fair headline would have been, "Americans give a pathetic 2.2% to charity, and still out-give the rest of the world"

Some comments on the USAToday article I wanted to respond to...

gensmahaut wrote:
According to this story, generosity has not increased, the percentage has stayed exactly the same. It' s just that wealth has been concentrated to a record extent, making the USA even more of a caste Latin American society relative to civilization than it already was. How about just not destroying FDR's legacy and returning America to the structure that allowed it to have its highest economic growth ever, despite huge wars against Hitler and Japan? Right now only a tiny fraction of those with high school degrees can support a family, a tremendous change from the situation when Reagan took office. CEO's are not working any harder, in fact quite the opposite, yet their pay relative to average workers has leapt by a factor of 10. All the charity in the world cannot mask the underlying situation.

The story does say that giving increased. The stats do not show any "concentration" of wealth, and FDR's legacy was to shove the nation down the slippery slope of socialism. Someone with a high school degree can support a family, if they are willing to A. work hard and B. not demand the typically opulent lifestyle of the American middle class. America's post WWII economy thrived because of the war, not in spite of it. CEO's are paid based on how much it takes to get someone who can do the job. If the business world seems ruthless, why would it be forgiving of CEOs. They face the exact same cold, economic pragmatism Liberals like this commenter always complain about.

Xrp wrote:
If my taxes were lower, I'd donate a whole lot more. But thanks to the government taxing me at over 30%, I feel that is about charity enough.

Also, that near $300,000,000,000.00 sure ain't coming from the poor, it's coming from the evil, hated, despised RICH AMERICANS! NO MORE CHARITY! TAX THEM ALL FOR ALL THEY ARE WORTH!

I agree about the deleterious affect taxation has on charitable giving. To a degree that 2.2% is low because of taxes, and including Federal, state and local taxes, the rate is much, much higher than 30%.

But as for the almost $300 billion coming from the rich, the USAToday article states that 65% of households that make less than $100,000 gave to charity. But there's something not mentioned. Somewhere around 10% of Americans live below the poverty line. Many of those not far above the poverty line, still are not able to itemize their taxes, therefore there would be no record of their charitable givings. So let's say the charitable giving of about 15% of Americans are not given in such a way that they can not be officially noted for such a study.

As an aside, and possibly somewhat anecdotal note, back when I was much younger and delivered pizzas, I noticed a consistent trend that the poorer the house, the larger the tip. I rarely got a tip from deliveries to large spacious houses, but rarely failed to get a tip from deliveries to mobile homes.

Our own giving is an example of how much this study may have missed. We don't make enough to itemize, so there's no official record. But we also have in the past few years set money aside for my wife to go twice to Nicaragua and once to Louisiana on humanitarian trips, each lasting a week. She used her vacation time, and not one penny of any of that, the cost of the trips nor the use of vacation time for a charitable work, would have been a part of the statistics this study released. How many other acts of charity by people in our economic bracket were also missed?

I still think 2.2% is an embarrassment, but given that that figure would comprise the giving on the top 85% of income earners only, the real story should be the generosity of America's poor and how it's ignored.

The stats I'd like to see are charitable giving as a percentage of income, divided into income brackets. Those over $500,000 a year, Those from $100,000 to $500,000. Those from $50,000 to $100,000. Those from $25,000 to $50,000. And those under $25,000. That would be a much more interesting story.

Posted by Danny Carlton at June 26, 2007 7:51 AM