Opinion: Percentage of Income Not Only Measure of Charity

A New York Times column compares and contrasts various wealth-based prescriptions for giving in the wake of reports on the first family’s 2009 charitable donations.

The Your Money columnist Ron Lieber writes that looking solely at giving as a percentage of income — as he said some readers did in comparing the Obamas’ donation of 6 percent of their adjusted gross income to George and Laura Bush’s 18 percent in 2007 — “misses the bigger picture,” which should take into account not just what people earn but “what they have.”

Noting that about half of the $229-billion Americans gave in 2008 went to religious institutions, he also explores Christian and Muslim injunctions for giving.

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