jacob's blog

Or are they?

I’ve always just assumed, or used what I thought was common sense in the belief that as a whole, liberals are more giving people then conservatives.  This is from my perspective as someone who came into college as a right wing conservative who has become a moderate in college, though I would by no means call myself a liberal.  That said it has always been somewhat of a sad admission that liberals, the tree-hugging, ‘love wins’ (sorry Mars Hill attendees), bleeding hearts that they are, are also more giving of their time and money to the causes they support.  It makes sense right?

Apparently it doesn’t.  Check out the following quote from the article “Conservatives More Liberal Givers” on RealClearPolitics.com:

• Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, 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.
• Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.
• In the 10 reddest states, 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 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 of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

That’s pretty clear evidence that my perception of what types of people give more to charity was completely incorrect.  If you look at the full article it goes more into detail about why this is the case, but the reason that stood out more to me is that the majority of Christians are conservatives, and this is the single most charitable people group when religion and political stance are considered.  The article also states that the least charitable group is secular conservatives, which makes it fairly apparant that political leaning isn’t the greatest determining factor.

Kind of puts a different perspective on things…