More New Englanders Give, but Plains Residents Give the Most, Study Finds

A higher percentage of New Englanders give to charity than do residents of any other region of the country, according to a new study issued by the Giving USA Foundation.

Sixty-seven percent of all American households donated to charity in 2002, but 82 percent of those in New England did, the study found. That was well ahead of the second-highest region: the Rocky Mountain states, where 71 percent of households gave. The lowest giving rate was in the Southwest, at 61 percent.

While New England had the highest percentage donating to charity, its residents did not make the biggest gifts. Residents of the Plains states gave an average of $1,458, followed closely by those in the Pacific region, at $1,450. The lowest average giving amounts were in the Mid-Atlantic ($965) and Great Lakes ($994) regions.

Because wages tend to be higher in New England than in the country as a whole, when giving is calculated as a percentage of income, residents of that region gave at the lowest rate: 1.3 percent of income, compared with a national average of 2 percent. The highest giving as a percentage of income was in the Plains and South Central states, at 2.2 percent.

The study was conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, and based on analyses of both Internal Revenue Service data on tax deductions for charitable giving claimed by those who itemize on their tax returns, and data the center collects from people who do not itemize on their tax returns, as well as those who do.

Discretionary Income

The report comes on the heels of a study done for the Boston Foundation, which adjusted each state’s income by its cost of living before determining what percentage of income residents had donated to charity (The Chronicle, November 24).

Patrick Rooney, the center’s director of research, said adjusting incomes for cost-of-living variations can be tricky.

“You want to look at giving in terms of discretionary income, which economists describe as after-tax income. You can’t give away what you don’t have, and you don’t have the money you pay in taxes. But you may also be able to reduce your tax liability by giving to charity, so how do you adjust for that?” he said. “My ideal would be to present both numbers, adjusted and not adjusted, and let the consumers of the data make their own judgments.”

Like the Boston Foundation report, the center’s study found that a greater percentage of people in the South and Midwest give to religious groups than do residents of other regions. More than half of the households in the Plains states (53 percent) gave to a religious charity, while only 37 percent of those in the Pacific region did so.

New England residents were the most likely to donate to secular causes, with 76 percent of households doing so. That was a far larger percentage than the next highest region, the Mountain states, at 63 percent. Households in the Southwest were the least likely to donate to nonreligious charities, at 48 percent.

Copies of the Giving USA Quarterly containing the study can be obtained for $35 apiece by calling the Giving USA Foundation AAFRC Trust for Philanthropy at (888) 544-8464. Annual subscriptions to Giving USA Quarterly can be ordered for $64 at the American Association of Fund Raising Counsel Web site: https://www.aafrc.org/secure/.