Americans Gave More in 2006

Kurt Brouwer June 27th, 2007

You don’t see stories like this one from the Associated Press (via CNN) too often. Our media seem to present ‘ugly American’ type stories far more often than positive ones like this. Maybe I’m being a bit unfair. Nonetheless, it was great to see that ordinary Americans were again the most generous people in the world in 2006. What you didn’t know that Americans were the most generous people in the world in 2005 too [emphasis added]?

‘Americans gave nearly $300 billion to charitable causes last year, setting a new record and besting the 2005 total that had been boosted by a surge in aid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma — and the Asian tsunami…’

‘…”What people find especially interesting about this, and it’s true year after year, that such a high percentage comes from individual donors,” Giving USA Chairman Richard Jolly said.

Individuals gave a combined 75.6 percent of the total. With bequests, that rises to 83.4 percent…’

‘…[Professor Claire] Gaudiani said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7 percent. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73 percent, while France, with a 0.14 percent rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany…’

I think this is very interesting. Americans gave more than twice what Brits did, not in dollar terms, but as a percentage of our overall economy. So, the true disparity in dollars would be much more. There seems to be something special going on here.

Hat tip: Backtalk blog

Did you enjoy this article?

Comments are closed.

Trackback URI |