A correspondent writes:
I’m doing some personal research on the correlation between family income and political affiliation and I was hoping you can help. I came across some illuminating maps that you created and was wondering where you got your data from. I can’t seem to find any hard data on the subject so any help would be greatly appreciated.
I [my correspondent] am looking into the assertion that conservatives are more generous than liberals. Specifically, I’m trying to debunk the thesis of Arthur C. Brooks’ Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. In this book, Brooks argues that liberals are less generous than conservatives and uses hard data to substantiate the claim. While I believe most of his analysis is spot on, I think that his results might be skewed by the way he measures generosity.
Brooks measures generosity as the percentage of income spent on charitable giving. I think that a better measure would be charitable giving as a percentage of disposable family income; people don’t give away what they can’t afford to. This is significant because, if your maps are correct, there’s the distinct possibility that conservatives make more than liberals on average and therefore have more to give. If I can get data on income as a function of political affiliation I can correct for non-disposable income and see if it makes a significant difference in the results.
My reply:
First, I’d like to point you to some updated maps that I’ve made of income and voting.
Our data came from the Pew Research Center. We used their polls taken during the few months before the election. We also adjusted for voter turnout using the Current Population Survey post-election supplement, but that’s less important, I think. (Yair and I are in the midst of writing up an article describing exactly what we did.)
Finally, Arthur Brooks’s findings seem plausible enough to me, even after controlling for income. My own pet explanation is in terms of default behavior. Or, to put it even more strongly, as commenters Ockham and Ubs wrote here, you’re much more likely to give to charity if somebody is asking you to do so–and conservatives might very well be more likely than liberals to be in settings where someone is personally asking them to give to charity.
"Conservatives might very well be more likely to be in settings than liberals where someone is likely to be personally asking them to give to charity"
I assume you promote that as an untested hypothesis; perfectly fine of course. My untested response is that since you believe Brook's study holds up after "controlling for income", there is no reasonable a priori reason to believe conservatives are asked more. Further, if asked more, it could be because the "askers" know by experience that conservatives give more–untested of course.
Also! You failed to to critique the "correspondent" who began his "scientific study" by stating "I am trying to debunk the thesis of Arther C Brooks". If that is what he is "trying" to do, I imagine he will succeed.
It's an aside, but I'm always a little disturbed by researchers who write something like "'m trying to debunk the thesis of Arthur C. Brooks' Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism".
We all have biases, and all have ideas about what effects we'd *like* to find, but at least nominally, our aim should be the truth – or at least a strong test of a theory or hypothesis.
Some information and discussion about this issue can be found at http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/Research/Giving… which also mentions some data sources.
One thing that is very clear from reading that document is that "charitable contributions" cover a very wide scope. For example, about 40% of charitable contributions are to religious organizations, and of that, 70% goes to church operations with only 30% going to church programs to aid the poor, sick, etc. There's certainly nothing wrong with donating to an organization that you personally benefit from, but to me this is morally somewhat different from a donation that serves only to help someone else. The same goes for arts funding — a significant fraction of charitable giving: if I like theater so I donate $500 to my local theater group, I would consider that differently from donating $500 to the local soup kitchen.
Another thing that is sort of remarkable is just how much money rich people can (and do) give away. 70% of the uber-rich (annual income > $ 1 million) donate to health-related charities, and the average contribution from these people is $92,000. In contrast, only 17% of normal households (household income
Mike: I'd be interested in further analyzing Brooks's data, but I have not had the time to do so, so all I can offer is my speculations. I think giving to charity is a good thing, and if this can be understood in terms of defaults and requests, I think this is interesting–it doesn't diminish either the good intentions or the direct benefits of the charitable giving.
Mike, Jeremy: I was taking a charitable (as it were) interpretation of my correspondent's question, which is that he was expecting to "debunk" Brooks's thesis but that he would let the data lead him to the appropriate conclusions.
Phil: Good points, and thanks for the information.
From the sociology corner of the world, here is this article by Francesca Borgonovi about contextual effects on giving and volunteering for both religious and secular causes. I have only skimmed this article, but it might be of interest to the correspondent and those posting here.