Liberals or Conservatives, Who's more giving?

[Demonaut]

article after article online says that Liberals seem to be more conservative with their time and money, listening to Mike Rosen here in Denver here he mentioned a recent study that found that conservatives were more charitable.
Now I know many of you may think this is an attack on Liberals but I'd rather have evidence to the contrary.
Thanks in advance! Bty, I rarely listen to conservative talk radio but the only am liberal host here is Jay Marvin and I rarely find him enlightening

[MidwestTransplant]

1. Warren Buffet is giving almost his whole fortune to charity.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. I've seen figures that say conservatives give more money to charity.

But I think that includes church tithing. It's also strictly money, not time.

[selador]

12. wrong

the same study that showed more money, ALSO showed they donated more time as well.

and yes, it does include church tithing

[NewJeffCT]

22. the study is wrong, however

I've seen it before and I've debunked it before as well.

[selador]

23. well

that's a nice assertion, but an assertion sans backup doesn't do a lot for me. am i supposed to take yer word for it? :)

like i said, i'd love to see data debunking this study. i have yet to see any

[divinecommands]

42. Selador...

I love your posts. That is all :-).

[JerseygirlCT]

49. Yes, it does. So in some ways, it makes sense. nt

[Donnachaidh]

3. Conservatives are only charitable if it gets them *something*

It doesn't have to be a physical *something*. They want people to recognize them as charitable so they do something in public for the accolades. If there is no *recognition* they go back to being stingy and mean-spirited assholes, who rant about welfare queens and their taxes funding schools for the poor.

Psychotic way to live, but they manage it well. :shrug:

[Beausoleil]

13. *someting* like a tax writeoff

For example, if the deduction for charity were ever eliminated, tithing to churches would be seriously reduced.

[selador]

15. as would most charitable giving

most probably. but of course that's speculation and it ignores the data. the data is pretty clear. conservatives, ceteris paribus, give more to charity - both time and money. you don't LIKE that ( i don't either). but im not going to redefine terms such as 'charitable' in order to explain away uncomfortable truths.

giving to a church is a charitable donation, just as much as united way, or any other non-profit org like that. and if you make ideological and subjective interpretation of WHICH churches are "charitable" etc. than you can explain away anything that bothers you. it<'s intellectually dishonest BUT OH SO TYPICAL[br />
it never ceases to amaze me the way the intellectually dishonest seek to explain away inconvenient truths through selective redefinition and blind allegiance to their side.

it's so transparent.

[opihimoimoi]

4. The Pubs like to play with numbers to make them look better..In this case

The Lipstick ain't workin...they still stink and smell like PIGS

They gave shit.....

NOLA is PROOF

[ck4829]

5. Note to conservatives

I really don't think that giving money to the Heritage Foundation or the defense funds for white collar criminals really counts as charity.

[Demonaut]

7. lol

I wonder how it's truly tabulated

[dbonds]

6. I have known conservatives that were charitable...

They cheated on their spouses, they lie to get ahead at work - even do underhanded things. They live a life less moral, but turn around and think they are buying morality with charities. Of course, because of some of the underhanded things they have done, they are usually making more money at work and in a better position to give to others also (funny how the corporate environment rewards immoral people). More liberals tend to give of their time to projects, and do everyday things to help.

[hack89]

40. I know liberals that have cheated and lied

are you really saying that liberal are fundamentally better people? I don't but it.

[dbonds]

41. Yes

In the realm of my experience liberals on a whole don't cheat and lie near as much as conservatives. That is my experience. I think those particular foibles would be contrary to a liberal heart. We have our own sets though.

[hack89]

50. Then you need to come to Rhode Island

and see what a bunch of thieves run this liberal, one party state.

[dbonds]

51. You sure they are real liberals?

In a one party town they could be lieing. Maybe they are conservatives that just want the hippy chicks (watch the Hippy documentary on History Channel to get that joke).

[hack89]

52. Hard to imagine a more liberal, pro-union state

very strong labor protection laws and the most enlightened welfare laws in the country (all of which I support, BTW). Unfortunately we have had one corruption scandal after another. Rhode Island is proof that absolute power truly is corrupting despite ones party affiliation.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. I've seen those figures, too, but I wonder WHAT KIND of charitable giving

they're talking about.

If it's about sending money to a TV preacher (on the lower end of the income scale) or paying a couple million to have a new municipal facility named after them (on the upper end of the income scale), that's one thing.

It it's about contributing to a food shelf or to scholarships for low-income students or to a free medical clinic or to disaster relief, that's another.

[selador]

14. well if you want to redefine charity

to suit YOUR ideology, than one can "explain" away the uncomfortable data points

the study looked at all charitable giving - iow, NON-mandatory (certainly paying taxes for example is mandatory) givings to non-profits.

and conservatives pay more, as a %age of their income and overall

also interestingly, poor people pay a greater %age of their icncome than middle or upper class.

you may not agree with the agenda of every church, but giving to a church has always been considered charitable giving. as soon as you start using subjective metrics to determine WHICH churches are charitable than your analysis becomes purely subjective rubbish.

i may disagree also, for instance, with much of the doctrine of the catholic church, but thye do immense amounts of charitable and humanitarian works

[Johonny]

18. you HAVE to define it

The person is simply pointing out it's possible liberals are simply more discriminate with their donations. A charity that spends a large portion of the donated money on itself, or to promote conservative agenda and little of it's donated money on it's stated charitable purpose isn't very attractive to many liberals. Just because society declares something a charity doesn't mean I have to consider it an actual charity nor do I have to consider the money donated to it wise or even charitable. You need precisely that kind of breakdown of the organizations donated to in order to truly understand the study. Without such information you can conclude pretty much anything. It's certainly possible that conservatives are more likely to belong to highly organized religions that demand yearly donations. The results may simply reflect that. It's impossible to tell for sure.

[riverdeep]

20. Well, it may be a wash, at best.

The Catholic Church by refusing to promote birth control in desperately poor areas, indirectly at least, contributes to forming the crises it later helps out with.

[treestar]

34. The reason it is hard to believe

I talk to conservatives and they are always talking about how the poor are lazy. They, the conservative worked for their money and it should not be "stolen" from them by the government. Fine, but in the process they express such contempt for the poor that it is hard to believe they would even think it the right thing to help them out. That would be "enabling their laziness." They seem to think it is a pure meritocracy and that helping the poor would be undermining the "penalty" for failing to be a success, and therefore how could they do it without making the poor lazier?

When conservatives talk about how the government should not "steal" from them to give their hard-earned cash to the unsuccessful who haven't earned it, they never say, "But if government didn't take it, I would give it anyway."

[Skittles]

47. correct

my guess: a lot of lying for tax write-off purposes

[mrreowwr_kittty]

9. That's because donations to church are counted

Conservatives tend to be churchgoers. That said, it aggravates me to see people writing off contributions to their lavishly appointed megachurches while so many are in poverty. I don't think manicured landscaping, basketball courts, coffee shops, and the pastor's Beemer are worthy of a deduction.

[elehhhhna]

35. they also write off their kid's church-school tuition as "tithes", which is

illegal, btw.

[Marr]

10. The calculations that support that idea count things like

giving to your wine club as "charity"-- at least that's what I've read. When you subtract all the spurious "donations" that are really just wealthy Republicans shifting money to one another for tax deductions, they're by far the more miserly.

[selador]

11. stating the truth

attackign with the truth is always warranted even if it makes ONE's side look bad.

fwiw, i've looked at the data, and it appears reasonably compelling

most people reflexively try to explain away, ignore, or attack the source when uncomfortable (or inconvenient) truths are presented. i'd LOVE to see some data showing the liberals give greater %age of income to charity and/or donate more time to volunteering, but all the data i have seen points to the opposite.

honesty is more important than partisanship for me.

[FredScuttle]

16. talk about playing with the facts

the study only concludes that those who identify as religious are more charitable than those who are not...you're extrapolating that to mean "conservative" vs. "liberal" just like your hero George Will. Please.

[selador]

17. im not extrapolating anything

and george will didn't conduct the study . he REPORTED on it

will's article IS rather poorly written. but i don't (in general) rely on media reports. when i see something digeted and referenced (whether by a left or right wing pundit) i go to the SOURCE. that's always true. because pundits generally filter things through their own biases.

after all this brouhaha came out on this a few days ago, i went and looked at the book at my local bookstore. i didn't buy it. i was there to buy something entirely more compelling. :)

im not saying the evidence is overwhelmingly compelling. im saying its pretty strong.

and i have yet to see any data that has come out with the OPPOSITE conclusion

have you?

[NewJeffCT]

28. the data is bogus and it's been proven bogus year after year (edited to add link)

yet, conservatives bring it up year after year and it makes the news year after year.

The data is based on itemized deductions - however, most of the wealthy states are blue states and have far more people itemizing deductions than people in poorer red states simply for the reason that more people in states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York & New Jersey own homes and itemize deductions than do people in red states, where home ownership is less common.

Example - if 80% of people in Massachusetts itemize deductions and 20% of those that itemize have an itemized charitable deduction, then it means that about 16% of Mass residents have given to charity. However, the charitable giving statistics have Massachusetts giving at 25%(20/80). A Massachusetts resident will also have a higher threshold for claiming a charitable deduction as well, if it is 2% of Adjusted Gross Income.

However, if only 40% of people in Alabama itemize their deductions, but 30% of those itemize their deductions, their charitable giving statistic is at a whopping 75% (30/40)compared to stingy Massachusetts giving 25%. However, if you look at the overall population, only 7.5% of Alabama residents have given to charity, while 16% of Mass residents.

here was the study from BC about three years ago:
http://www.bc.edu/research/cwp/features/generosityreport.html

[dembotoz]

19. Could very well be true

If a conservative believes that church organization should provide food pantry and soup kitchen like benefits, they may contribute to make them possible.
The liberal perhaps would be more likely to think that the benefits would be better handled by the government on a taxation basis.
My hope then would be that the liberal would be more likely to push for a higher baseline standard of living than those who would limit benefits but contribute to the "worthy" poor.

[damntexdem]

21. Liberals are more giving to society in general, to those ulike themselves.

Conservatives are move giving to those like themselves.

[drmeow]

24. dembotoz has a good point

Conservatives think that the safety net should be provided by charity while liberals think it should be provided by the government.

Also, liberals may give more to groups that are not classified as charities because of political activities - groups like Greenpeace or MoveOn.org.

Finally the religious aspect is quite important. The Mormon church mandates tithing - even if you can't buy food for your family you are expected to tithe. I'm not saying that religious giving is not valid giving, simply that the pressure to give is much higher in religious groups.

[varelse]

25. It'd be a lot easier to answer the question

if you were to refer to a specific study or a set of them. Or maybe you could link to one or more of these articles. I haven't seen any links in this thread so far, just lots of rhetoric and speculation.

Just sayin'

[drmeow]

27. Funny

we just essentially posted the same thing simultaneously!

[NewJeffCT]

29. see my post above

Every year, a group called the College of Philanthropy puts out a list that shows their view of charitable giving by state.

And, every year, it shows the poorer red states like Alabama, Mississippi, etc at the top of giving lists, and wealthy states like Connecticut & Massachusetts at the bottom.

However, the study is fatally flawed because it is based on a percent of itemized deductions, and people in wealthy states are far more likely to itemize deductions.

[varelse]

32. Thanks for the links

it's a good start... do you know of any other studies being done? From their website it looks like the Boston Center on Wealth and Philanthropy publishes (or claims to have started publishing) a new study every year.

Their "second annual" published study on "Charitable Giving Indices" was released in November, 2006.

According to that document, the 'top 10' states aren't poor, nor are all of them red...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (11-16-06) – New research by the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College identifies New York, Utah, California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Georgia, Massachusetts, Hawaii and South Carolina as the ten leaders in charitable giving among the 50 states. In addition, the District of Columbia was second only to New York in the new report, released this week by the Boston Foundation.

[drmeow]

26. BTW - do you have a link?

I'd be interested to know the methodology of these studies. As a scientist, I have seen many a research finding, while technically accurate, distorted in the media for a variety of reasons. Going back to the original source is always a better way of confirming the data.

[NewJeffCT]

30. Here is a link to a recent article (see my post above for the debunking link)

Be warned, it's from George Will.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/26/AR2008032602916.html

[NewJeffCT]

31. Another point to make - blue states give and red states take

Blue states send more money into the federal government than they get back (CT and NJ top the list for states that get the least return for their tax dollars)

Red States tend to get back more than they pay into the federal government.

[drmeow]

33. So I looked up the original paper

Compassion, religion, and politics
Arthur C Brooks. Public Interest. Washington: Fall 2004. , Iss. 157; pg. 57, 10 pgs

First, according to Wikipedia, "The Public Interest was a quarterly conservative politics and culture journal founded by Irving Kristol in 1965. ... Its senior editors were Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer. Its publication committee included Francis Fukuyama, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Charles Murray, and George F. Will."

Second, Brooks does not report ANY statistical analysis of the data. He merely reports percentage differences. You cannot draw conclusions about behavior without doing statistics unless you sample EVERY single person in the US (an impossibility). This paper would never managed to get published in a scientific peer reviewed journal - it isn't even good science. Furthermore, he doesn't even provide any references for statements he makes such as, "... past research on volunteerism and philanthropy shows clearly that people who give and volunteer for religious organizations are far more likely than others to donate time and money to explicitly nonreligious charities as well."

A few additional key quotes:

"... the differences in giving and volunteering among political groups are small (conservatives are slightly more likely to give money than liberals)" - this suggests that the difference is a statistical anomaly and that it would be equally likely with a different sample for liberals to give more than conservatives.

"Which is more compassionate: the religious Right or the secular Left? The answer is the former. The reason for this, however, appears to be religion, not political ideology. The religious Right and religious Left are both far more compassionate than secularists from either political side."

Important to consider in light of

"Religious conservatives have the highest average annual income ($33,000), while religious liberals have the lowest ($25,000)."

Now, I have not gone to the University of Chicago website to track down the General Social Survey from which the data is drawn but the complete and utter lack of scientific rigor in this journal article (by the same author that George Will cites) leads me to suspect that the findings do not hold up under scrutiny. If Brooks' findings were statistically significant, it wouldn't be published here, it would be published in a respected peer reviewed journal.

[DiverDave]

36. Ask your mailman when he collects canned food

Our lower class neighborhood gives FAR more then those rich assholes in pike creek and hockessin

Where all the millionaires live

Maybe we see it a little clearer then they do, which doesnt excuse them a bit.

[Orsino]

37. The rich can easily afford charitable giving.

The rich tend to be conservative.

Simple.

[NewJeffCT]

38. the wealthiest states are blue states, though

Highest incomes are usually Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts... all reliably blue states.

see my post above for the debunking of the myth that conservatives/red states give more.

[drmeow]

39. A follow-up on the original study

Here's what I found at the University of Chicago:

http://www.norc.org/NR/rdonlyres/7EFE80C6-FD3A-46F7-AF22-ACE5C9E34E14/0/AltruismandEmpathyinAmerica.pdf

"Empathy, altruistic love, and altruistic values are higher among
those favoring more governmental social spending, but altruistic behavior is
unrelated to attitudes on governmental social spending."

[undercutter2006]

43. I don't ever give to charity

Because I pay taxes. I really don't have time to try and figure out how much money I should give away and to who, it's much easier just to get the amount taken out of my paycheck so that we can help some college students and unemployed people and such. And the more money I earn the bigger the tax is so it's only fair. I like the system.

[Skittles]

46. wow

that's what every repuke I know says

[undercutter2006]

48. yeah

The difference is that I am for social programs, progressive taxation, and against bush tax cuts

[Jarn]

44. See this for a good debunking

http://scienceavenger.blogspot.com/2008/03/will-brooks-and-compassionate.html

[readmoreoften]

45. To hell with charity. The real question is 'who is fighting for social justice'?

When I see charities standing around at traffic lights collecting money for some poor kid who can't afford medical treatment I give no props whatsoever to those who give a dollar and don't back single payer healthcare. Please.