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For an interesting contrast, see Who Really Gives? Partisanship and Charitable Giving in the United States, by two political scientists at MIT [1]. The results

by todd8 10y ago

For an interesting contrast, see Who Really Gives? Partisanship and Charitable Giving in the United States, by two political scientists at MIT [1]. The results there surprised me, for example, there is a positive correlation between the states that voted for Bush in 2004 and charitable giving. Also from the conclusion "Although previous research indicates that conservatism is a reliable proxy for identifying potential donors or donor communities, our results suggest that organizations would be better off simply targeting wealthier donors, regardless of political beliefs." [1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1100129/who-gives.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1100...

arjie 10y ago
As this paper and others describe, the difference is almost entirely attributable to giving to religious causes, most notably the local church. I'm not going to say it's not charity to give to a thing that's a charity, but if the cause is evangelizing Christianity, then that's not the same as giving some poor kid food and education. Of course, the whole thing is confounded by the fact that the guy evangelizing is often also providing food and education, but without knowing the percentages it's hard to see if the numbers still line up when you subtract that cost.
- akvadrako 10y ago
  According to a well-researched article [1], in 2010 Catholic Chartities USA spent about 85% of it's $170 billion budget on health care and colleges. Based on what I've seen in poorer countries, my personal take is they do provide high quality education and care without much overhead. The evangelising is mostly implicit and doesn't take many resources. More than anything, it provides a soft filter for who gets those services. [1] http://www.economist.com/node/21560536 http://www.economist.com/node/21560536
  - arjie 10y ago
    Ah, and local churches (the majority of the difference between red/blue states) transfer donations to CC USA? If so, that's pretty damned good.

by todd8 10y ago

arjie 10y ago

As this paper and others describe, the difference is almost entirely attributable to giving to religious causes, most notably the local church. I'm not going to say it's not charity to give to a thing that's a charity, but if the cause is evangelizing Christianity, then that's not the same as giving some poor kid food and education. Of course, the whole thing is confounded by the fact that the guy evangelizing is often also providing food and education, but without knowing the percentages it's hard to see if the numbers still line up when you subtract that cost.

akvadrako 10y ago
According to a well-researched article [1], in 2010 Catholic Chartities USA spent about 85% of it's $170 billion budget on health care and colleges. Based on what I've seen in poorer countries, my personal take is they do provide high quality education and care without much overhead. The evangelising is mostly implicit and doesn't take many resources. More than anything, it provides a soft filter for who gets those services. [1] http://www.economist.com/node/21560536 http://www.economist.com/node/21560536
- arjie 10y ago
  Ah, and local churches (the majority of the difference between red/blue states) transfer donations to CC USA? If so, that's pretty damned good.