Who Really Cares: America's Charity Divide

This book is an older book, published in 2006 and written by Arthur C. Brooks. Arthur Brooks is a prolific author and I have read several of his books and enjoyed them. He used to be the head of American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. and now teaches classes in the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School. He focuses on happiness research currently and has a blog called The Art of Happiness. He's a pretty interesting guy. He gave a good talk at ARC last winter called The Science of Happiness in 15 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8a0T5XLrXc

I recently read about his current schedule which he created to maximize health and happiness. He's 61 years old and has bad genes for longevity. So, every day, he gets up at 4:30am and exercises for an hour before attending Mass (he's a devout Catholic). Then after breakfast, he works with no interruptions from 8-12noon for maximal writing and creative productivity. In the afternoon he teaches, eating dinner at 6, walking with his wife for 40 minutes and then going to bed at 9pm. They share their house with one of their sons, his wife, and child. Down the street lives another son's family and then their daughter lives within an hour's drive.

In this book, he discusses some surprising research about charitable giving. America is the most generous nation in the world, it turns out, in both financial and non-financial ways including organ donation and volunteerism. But there are two groups in our country: those who give a lot and those who give hardly at all. He uses a lot of data to discover who it is that gives and who doesn't. The results surprised him. The people who give don't have race, gender, income or political party affiliation in common. However, they do have other things in common.

1.  People who are religious are givers. People who attend church weekly are 25 percent more likely to give money (and not just to their religious organizations) and 23 percent more likely to volunteer than people who rarely attend church. They give 350% more money and volunteer 200% more time despite having the same income as those who don't give. Interestingly, secular (non-religious) conservatives are actually less generous than secular liberals. 

2.  People who oppose government redistribution are givers. After adjusting for all other factors, if people believe that the government should redistribute money, they are 10 percentage points less likely to give either time or money. When combined with religiosity, a religious person who is opposed to government redistribution will give 100 times more to charity and 50 times more to non-religious charities. This result was especially surprising to him.

3. People who are working class are givers. Wealthy people, those whose net worth is over a million dollars, give about half of all donations. However, in percentage of income given, the working class actually gives more. There is a distinction, however, between those who work and those on welfare. Among similar families with the same annual income, those who are on welfare are 300% less likely to give than those who are working.

4. People who are married with children are givers. This may seem contradictory since children are expensive and time-consuming, however, parenting is itself a charitable act and people with children are more likely to give in other ways as well. Also, generous parents raise generous children and people are more likely to be generous with inherited money than earned money.

Perhaps the most interesting point of the book is that people who give to charity are happier, healthier, wealthier, and more civically engaged. If you compare two people who are the same demographically including having the same income, if one gives and the other does not, the following year, the person who gives is going to have a larger income than the one who doesn't. Charity is good for both the giver and the receiver. For that reason, a world where the government provides for all the needs of the poor is going to be a less happy world.

Thanks to the blog "True Charity" whose summary was very helpful. I read the book but I borrowed liberally from their summary to help me write mine.