Liberals Are Stingy When It Comes To Charity Giving
By Gordon Bishop (04/22/08)
Some 16 months ago, a professor at Syracuse University published "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism."
The surprise is that liberals are much less charitable than conservatives, reports Professor Arthur C. Brooks.
Citizens of Austin, Texas, home of the Lone Star State’s government and flagship university, have really refined social consciences, if they do say so themselves, and they do say so, speaking via bumper stickers.
A fellow columnist, George F. Will, writes that Don Willett, a justice of the state Supreme Court, has commuted behind bumpers proclaiming: “Better a Bleeding Heart Than None at All” . . . “Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty” . . . “The Moral High Ground Is Built on Compassion” . . . “Arms Are For Hugging” . . . “Will Work (When the Jobs Come Back From India” . . . “Jesus Is a Liberal” . . . “God Wants Spiritual Fruits , Not Religious Nuts” . . . “The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans” . . . “Republicans Are People Too – Mean, Selfish, Greedy People” . . . and so on.
Willet thinks Austin subverts a stereotype. “The belief that liberals care more about the poor may scratch a partisan on ideological itch, but the facts are hostile witnesses,” Will writes.
If many conservatives, as the story goes, are liberals who have been mugged by reality, Professor Brooks, a registered dependent, is a social scientist who has been mugged by data. They include these findings:
- Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservatives, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).
- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.
- Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.
- In the 10 reddest states (Republicans), in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest (Democrats) states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.
- People who reject the idea that “government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality” give an average age of four times more than people who accept that proposition.
Professor Brooks demonstrates a correlation between charitable behavior and “the values that lie beneath” liberal and conservative labels. Two influences on charitable behavior are religion and attitudes about the proper role of government.
The single biggest predictor of someone’s altruism, Willet says, is religion. It increasingly correlates with conservative political affiliations because, as Brooks’ book says, “the percentage of self-described Democrats who say they have ‘no religion’ has more than quadrupled since the early 1970s.”
America is largely divided between religious givers and secular nongivers, and the former are disproportionately conservative.
While conservatives tend to regard giving as a personal rather than governmental responsibility, liberals consider private charity a retrograde phenomenon – a poor palliative for an inadequate welfare state, and a distraction from achieving adequacy by force, by increasing taxes.
Gordon Bishop
(Printer friendly version) Email: Gordon Bishop
