From the SuperFreakonomics chapter on altruism: “Americans in particular are famously generous, donating about $300 billion a year to charity, more than 2 percent of the nation’s GDP.” That said, the conventional wisdom seems to hold that Americans are outclassed by our neighbors to the north. A new report by The Fraser Institute, however, challenges this wisdom: “[E]ven the most generous Canadians don’t match the level of charitable giving found in the United States. Monetary generosity in the U.S. surpassed that of Canada, with 27.3 per cent of American tax filers donating to charity, compared to 23.6 per cent of Canadian tax filers. In comparing Canadian provinces to American states on the overall index, Canadian provinces and territories occupy six of the bottom 10 rankings, with Manitoba, Canada’s highest-ranked jurisdiction, ranking 35th overall.” According to Charles Lammam, co-author of the report: “The notion that Canadians are more generous that Americans is a myth, at least when it comes to private monetary charitable giving.” Within the U.S., Utah is the most generous state, where “33.7 percent of tax filers donating 3.20 percent of the total income earned in the state.” (HT: Ricardo Bortolon) [%comments]
Are Canadians Really More Generous Than Americans?
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1. How much of either nation’s charity goes to pay church people to preach church dogma to the faithful, or to proselytize the unfaithful? Does this explain Utah’s number one ranking?
2. In a recent visit in a very Republican area of Florida I noted in the local paper a notice for a benefit lunch to help an uninsured cancer patient pay for her medical bills. Charity in the USA, unnecessary in Canada.
As a Canadian studying economics in British Columbia, the region that the Fraser Institute tends to focus on, I’d be hesitant to take what they say without looking for an alternative explanation.
I’m not saying Canadians are more generous, but this particular group would be more than happy to simply compare declared charitable contributions on tax returns and stop at that.
I think this may fail to take into account the fact that Canada has a much simpler income tax system than the United States, and as such I don’t think most Canadians have a strong incentive to keep their receipts until tax time.
I’m not sure if that could make the difference or not.
It’s also important to keep in mind that Canadians vote in the governments that donate to charities on our behalf. Because we see ourselves as generous people (whether that be true in fact or not), we seek out governments that reflect that value.
Tithing to one’s church might be charity, but generosity as a ticket to heaven is not really charity in the opinion of many secularists.
It would be interesting to know, however, how much of the charitable giving is religious in nature. Although contributions to megachurches, the Latter Day Saints and the Vatican are considered considered charitable, I suspect that’s not what most readers are thinking of in terms of ‘generosity’… Utah is probably the most religious state, hence the high percentage of giving. Canada is more secular, yielding a lower overall percentage, but perhaps a higher value in terms of service and generosity (instead of church overhead/administration). Not to mention that the higher tax rates create a strong social safety net, so the need among the poor is nowhere near as great as in the US…
It should be pointed out that Utah is dominated by a religion that tithes 10% of the earnings of its members. And, from what I understand (could be wrong) the US tax code is more generous for charitable donations than most other countries.
This assumes all donators are claiming their tax deductions on their donations.
As a Canadian, I’ve never heard it claimed that we’re more generous than our neighbours to the south. In fact, I’d always assumed the opposite. Beyond that, there are several gaping holes in this report (though I’d expect nothing less from the Fraser Institute, which tends to do everything it can to make Canada look bad).
First and most obviously, using charitable giving statistics as the sole predictor of “generosity” is grossly misleading. There are many other factors that contribute to a given person’s perceived generosity, none of which were taken into account with this report. The narrow scope of the report would be acceptable if its authors were content to be merely relaying information on charitable giving. Instead, they decided to make bombastic claims about Americans being more generous than Canadians, because that sells well in the media (and because we Canadians love comparing ourselves to Americans). On a side note, while this report will undoubtedly make headlines across my country, most Americans will probably pay little or no attention to it, and for good reason.
The other problem with the narrow scope of this report is that it doesn’t attempt to explore any of the reasoning behind the numbers – our tax structure is much different (charitable giving incentives), and our non-profit organizations typically receive much more government funding than their counterparts in the U.S., meaning they rely less on support from individuals.
A much more interesting report would have involved discovering whether Americans and Canadians have different perceptions of how important their individual contributions are to the continuance of non-profit organizations, coupled with a look at differences in non-profit advertising methods and frequencies on both sides of the border, and how these would affect giving behaviour.
Germans who are church members pay a firm percentage (in my case 9%) of their income tax as “Kirchensteuer” (church tax), which is unknown in America. So the situation in various countries is quite different.