Liberal New Englanders give least to charity, Southerners give the most

[jay gw]

Did you know that 'liberal' New Englanders and Californians rank the highest in incomes, and lowest in charitable giving? I suppose it's not something they would want anyone to hear.

http://www.catalogueforphilanthropy.org/cfp/db/generosity.php?year=2004

Technical Notes for 2004 Generosity Index (2002 Data)

The Generosity Indexâ„¢ (GI) was conceived in 1997 as a concise way to summarize Massachusetts' and New England's greatest problem in philanthropy: that we have the nation's largest gap between our ranks in income and our ranks in charitable giving.

The Generosity Index, with its "catchy" name, publicizes that fact and provides a way to monitor progress against the problem. We arrive at it by ranking each state's Average Adjusted Gross Income (AAGI) and Average Itemized Charitable Contribution (AICD or AICC), then subtracting the second rank from the first to get a single plus or minus number for each state indicating the favorable or unfavorable gap separating the ranks, and then ranking those numbers.
_____

How very interesting. Note that California ranks extremely high in average incomes, 6th in the nation, and very low in charitable giving.

Very interesting indeed.

[geni]

Well donations to the churchs do tend to be higher in the south.

[aerocontrols]

It's a bad measure.

Mississippi's 'having' rank 50
Connecticut's 'having' rank 1


If Mississippi gives 0%, their 'giving' rank will be 50.
Score: 50-50 = 0

If Connecticut gives 100%, their 'giving rank will be 1.
Score: 1 - 1 = 0.


The best that the richest state can score is 0, no matter how generous they are, which is equivalent to the worst score the poorest state can make, no matter how miserly they are.


For what it's worth, I've seen better statistical measures that show essentially the same thing, that the South and 'Red' Midwest are more generous charity-wise than the Blue states. This measure exaggerates the difference, I suspect because they're trying to guilt the richer states into giving more.

[jj]

Isn't it about time that we sort out the church donations and remove them, and then we can find out if this kind of claim is hate-mongering or not?

[digitalmcq]

Yeah, but our divorce and teen pregnancy rates are much lower here in Sodom... I mean Massachusetts.

Take that, Bible Belt!

[Just thinking]

I really find this sort of data very devisive (on both sides of the aisle) ... state by state comparisons?? What good is that? You have to go by individual incomes to see if rich people are more generous than others. It's the same thing with that stupid "United States of Canada - Jesusland" map -- there were millions of people in the blue states that voted for GW Bush and millions from the "Bible Belt" that voted for Kerry. This type of nonsense is nothing but hateful ignorance.