Recent surveys have found that the poor donate a larger percentage of their income per capita than individuals in higher income brackets and their generosity tends to remain higher during economic downturns.
The poorest one-fifth of American households with a 2007 average pretax household income of $10,531 gave 4.3 % of their income to charitable organizations. The richest one-fifth of American households with 2007 average pretax household income of $158,388 gave 2.1% of their income.
In addition, charitable gifts from the poor are effectively not tax-deductible because the poor don’t earn enough to justify itemizing their deductions. After the richest household’s tax deduction, their real cost of giving is around 1.4%. That’s about 1/3 of what the poor give as a percentage of theirs.
Why do you think the poor are more generous than the wealthy?
What do you make of the high earner’s meager 1.4% real cost of charity?
What blessings are we as a culture missing by this apparent lack of generosity?
Data from Rusty Lewis @ Generis
I’ve actually experienced this often in my life. I know quadrozillionaires and people barely getting by. The latter win by a longshot when it comes to giving….and not talking about it…
The most profound experience I had of this was when I was a teenager. We’d go down to Mexico to a little fishing village called Puerto Lobos. There was NOTHING there but some shacks. No store. Dirt road. The whole village wasn’t even a quarter of a mile long. The boondocks personified. There was a little cement building, just a box, no windows or doors, that we would rent. The villager’s homes were made of cardboard boxes, corrugated metal, pieces of wood and this and that. Literal shacks with dirt floors, but they were the HAPPIEST and KINDEST people I’ve ever seen (apart from the Irish!!!). These shacks were spotless…very clean. And all through the day they would stream over to our room with food and presents. Just wide open and sunny people. My step father always brought extra food to share with them as well. None of us spoke Spanish and they didn’t speak English and it didn’t matter.
I’m probably idealizing these people in my memory, as this was thirty years ago….but if I am it’s only by a smidgeon!
I have noticed that when I have a steady flow of cash in my pocket, that I spend freely, but when I have nearly empty pockets, then I start taking a serious look at what I’m spending it on. I think that when I am paying more attention to where my money goes, I’m more aware of the blessings that flow from giving. Which reminds me, I haven’t given this month. Thanks Ed!
Forest (single R),
I appreciate your thought about paying attention and the blessings that flow.
It seems one of the keys to our spiritual journey is to develop the life discipline that keeps us focused and dependent on God even when times are good. I haven’t worked that out in my own life but really desire to.
Ed
Forrest (double R),
I’ve experienced that as well but not only in poor countries. There are many people here in the states that don’t place so much emphasis on their financial place in culture. They are most often quite generous and I have an awful lot to learn from them.
Maybe they understand and have applied the verse below far deeper than I have:
Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.
Thanks for stopping by,
Ed
From my experience it seems the poor or at least the less well off are less likely to care about the results of their giving. That is to say every time I’ve heard the phrase “…I’d give them some money but they’d just spend it on booze”, it’s been from someone with plenty of money (and on a side note who cares if they spend it on booze I mean I know I don’t pay that close attention in church but I don’t think I’ve ever heard about a results column on God’s ledger with regards to charitable giving). Additionally I think there is a bit of a karmatic (yeah I know that’s not a word but it works for me) viewpoint from that of the poor; if you yourself live near the line and you know somebody who needs help, well odds are at some point you may need help so if you can afford it it makes sense to help them so that they will help you (my apologies to my grammar teacher for that last sentence).
As far as why the well off don’t give more, to me that seems like a rather easy answer, it costs a lot of money to be rich
I’d say the biggest thing the well off miss by not giving more to charity is knowing their neighbors (I say this as someone who is admittedly not very social), and knowing need. That is the refrigerator is broke but not having enough money to call the repairman, but it needs to be fixed so what’d ya do, you ask the neighbor if they know anything about refrigerators.
Well that’s enough rambling from me.
Cheers,
I don’t have an answer, but perhaps different segments of society are moving at different speeds into the “post-christian era”, with the poor being the last to leave fundamentalist beliefs and actions related to those beliefs.
Rick,
Hummm…thanks for the unique insight. I’ve never pondered the karmatic perspective but..yea…I can see it.
And I like your thought that it costs a lot to be rich these days.
You made me smile.
Ed
Bob,
Now that’s an interesting take as well.
I do think riches allow us to be far more independent where we can lose touch with those that hurt. We lose the connection so we don’t know, or care, or feel a responsibility.
And as a result we can become very alone. The rich may hurt as much as anyone but too disconnected to understand the joy in generosity.
Ed