The Charities Aid Foundation recently published a report on charitable giving by individuals in 24 countries. Their analysis covered over half of the world’s population and 75 percent of the global economy.
The United States ranked first based on charitable giving by individuals expressed as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The top 10 countries are shown below. The U.S. was almost twice as generous as the second ranked country, New Zealand. Generosity is not just a phenomenon restricted to Western economies, with South Korea, India, and Russia all being included in the top 10 list.
The report also examined the relationship between generosity and the level of taxation and government spending. Strikingly, the authors of the report did not find any correlation between generosity and the overall tax burden, the top income tax rate, government expenditure as a percent of GDP, the corporation tax rate, average rate of employee social security charges, or the average income tax level.
They did find a correlation between charitable giving and other aspects of giving such as volunteering time and helping a stranger. Not surprisingly, countries where people are more willing to volunteer their time are also more likely to give monetarily to charities.
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