I believe there is also a link that countries have the lowest tax rates have the highest levels of philanthropy. That would be an interesting relationship to r

I believe there is also a link that countries have the lowest tax rates have the highest levels of philanthropy. That would be an interesting relationship to read something about. Some brief searching doesn't turn up any good studies either way. If we limit it to developed countries, the hypothesis would be that philanthropy is highest in low-tax places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Chile; at a middle level in middle-tax places like Canada, the USA, and South Korea; and at the lowest level in high-tax places like Germany, France, and Sweden. I suppose there might be some confounding cultural differences between N. America, S. America, Asia, and Europe as well. Also may look different depending on whether you're looking at large donors, or at typical contribution by the median household. (The list above chosen fairly arbitrarily, based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu... as the metric for general tax levels in a country.)