Christian Smith, a sociologist at Notre Dame, has been reporting the results of a large Science of Generosity project. Sociology is particularly useful for giving us a sense of proportion of how phenomena are distributed in a large population.
Americans as a whole are generous people. We give away huge amounts of money for good causes.
However, nearly half of Americans - 45% - give nothing.
The high standard of tithing (giving at least 10%) is met by only 3%.
Poorer people give away a higher proportion of their income than richer people do.
Looked at another way, 57% of all the charitable dollars in America are contributed by the 5% of Americans who are most generous.
And I should note that the main point of The Paradox of Generosity, by Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson, is that people who give more away lead happier and healthier lives.
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3 comments:
Very interesting. Thanks.
It is an interesting, but not surprising, fact that poorer people give the greater percentage of their wealth than the wealthy.
Link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Paradox-Generosity-Receive-Grasping/dp/0199394903
Part of the description:
"This wealth of evidence reveals a consistent link between demonstrating generosity and leading a better life: more generous people are happier, suffer fewer illnesses and injuries, live with a greater sense of purpose, and experience less depression. Smith and Davidson also show, however, that to achieve a better life a person must practice generosity regularly-random acts of kindness are not enough."
Yes - Aristotle is right that a happy life comes from habits, not one-off acts of will.
The other statistic of interest is income. There is at least some data that suggests that $70,000 is when donating money has more of an impact on happiness. It would be interesting to see if there is an inflection point around there. Thanks for the post. I find tithing, and its relative lack at higher incomes, interesting.
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