Since I have been interacting recently with bloggers of diverse political beliefs and ideologies, I thought this would be of interest.
“the Catalogue For Philanthropy recently released their 2004 Generosity Index with some rather stunning findings. What this directory of non-profit organizations does every year is compare the average adjusted gross income of each state to the average itemized charitable deduction, and derive a ranking based upon the differences in these statistics.
According to their calculations, for the eighth year in a row, Mississippi is the most generous state in our nation, followed by Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Alabama — all red states that Mr. Bush won by an average margin of 25%. In fact, the top 25 most philanthropic states according to this study all voted for Mr. Bush. This means that all the states that Mr. Kerry won in November fall into the bottom half of charitable contributions as related to income in our nation. Moreover, the worst seven states in this study also all voted for Mr. Kerry, including number 49 (Massachusetts), which Mr. Kerry won by a comfortable 25% margin. ”
Coincidence?
I am an eighteen-year-old college freshman at UC Berkeley who became interested in politics at a young age. Besides being part of the Berkeley College Republicans, Berkeley Students for Life, and KALX, I enjoy reading, singing, and playing guitar. One of my main interests is sharing my opinion at my personal blog and at the ACYU, of which I am a co-founder. Email me: 
June 6th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
The “blue” states don’t have to give. They would prefer to pick our pockets.
June 7th, 2006 at 3:16 am
Feh. Like everything coming from Michelle Maglalang the anchor baby, this qualifies as a hoax.
And of course, Maglalang (whom you really should give credit to) omits to mention that the blue states pay for the red states. $0.19 of my New York tax dollar goes to places like Missisippi; they better be charitable, considering they’re on welfare.
:-), StS
June 7th, 2006 at 4:37 am
Hold on, I’m (supposed to be) studying for my final exams tomorrow. I promise you, I will respond.
June 7th, 2006 at 4:41 am
Study. That’s so much more important than any of this.
:-), StS
June 7th, 2006 at 9:32 am
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” — Benjamin Disraeli
The “Generosity Index” is specious. The methodology used to construct it is flawed. First, it introduces artificial fixed distances between continuous data points when it calculates the “Giving Rank”, and “Having Rank”. Next, it magnifies these artificialities by calculating statistics based on these derived rankings.
To see the absurdity of this measure, one need only do a little examination of the raw data given in the spreadsheet on the “Catalogue for Philanthropy” website. Measure the coefficient of correlation between the “Percentage of Returns with ICDs” and the “Generosity Index” on the “All Returns”. You will find it is .656. That is significant. A perfect correllation would yield a measure of 1.0, while no correlation would measure 0, and a perfect negative correllation would yield -1.0.
What this means is that as the “Generosity Index” tends lower, the percentage of Returns with ICDs tends to increase. That result runs completely counter to what one might intuitively believe the “Generosity Index” to measure.
To be sure, the correlation isn’t perfect. But note that in the “most generous” state as measured by the “Generosity Index”, 20.7% of the tax returns show charitable giving. Yet, in the “least generous” state according to the specious index, 31.6% of the people have donated to charity. Quelle counterintuitive!
There are other flaws with the methodology
Of course, as flawed as the “Generosity Index” is as a measure of anything meaningful, it is far worse that someone would use that bogus invention to conclude moral superiority of “Red” states.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:51 am
Having fun with bogus statistics. If one uses the same methodology as the “Catalogue for Philanthropy”, but instead of bases the “Having Index” on the median state income instead of the average state income, the results are quite different. (Median income would be a far more appropriate measure of central tendency than average income.)
With the alternate rankings the top five states are (in order):
Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Delaware, and California.
The old top five drop to positions 9, 22,45, 16, and 13 in order.
So bogus, this “Generosity Index” is. So, totally ignorant it is to infer moral superiority based on it.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
Nobody has mentioned this, but these data include not just charitie. They include all itemized donations to churchs and TV preachers.
June 8th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Stalin:
Another example of apparently not reading the articles (or perhaps being delibrately misleading?).
The article in fact does not say that the Generousity index is a hoax. It says, “With data so slippery and definitions of “generosity” so elusive, it’s hard to say how stingy, cheap, or average Massachusetts truly is.”
Furthermore, the other “counter”-study mentioned in the article is totally ridiculous (and I hope you will agree here). It compares the “actual giving in each state to its predicted level of giving.” How? Well, for example, the study found that blacks usually contribute greater amounts. So, if a state has a small black population, then it would probably have a smaller contribution level, according to this study. Therefore, even though the state may have a very high average income, if it has a small population of blacks and gives relatively little, it can still be considered “generous”.
I do agree that the Generousity Index could be made more scientific, and do the calculations without subtracting ranks and such.
So, I did my own calculations. I took the numbers from the Excel file on the Generousity index. I then divided the average Adjusted Gross Incomes for each state by the Avg. Itemized Charitable Contribution to get the ratio of contributions per amount of income.
The results are in order from least generous to most.
California
New York
Florida
Texas
Illinois
Pennsylvania
New Jersey
Ohio
Michigan
Massachusetts
Virginia
Wisconsin
North Carolina
Washington
Georgia
Minnesota
Maryland
Indiana
Arizona
Connecticut
Colorado
Missouri
Oregon
Kentucky
Tennessee
Iowa
South Carolina
Louisiana
Alabama
Nevada
Kansas
New Hampshire
Oklahoma
Maine
Rhode Island
New Mexico
Nebraska
Arkansas
Mississippi
Hawaii
West Virginia
Utah
Idaho
Delaware
Vermont
Montana
Alaska
North Dakota
South Dakota
Wyoming
10/15 of the least generous are blue. 12/15 of the most generous are red.
June 8th, 2006 at 3:13 am
I thought this part was fascinating:
“Independent corroboration of the Generosity Index is that states’ rankings generally follow what is known about religious giving patterns: 7 of the bottom 8 states are Catholic, while 11 of the top 22 states are Southern Baptist (the number would be higher if the category were broadened to include all Evangelical Protestants, such as Mormons. We would expect religious cultures to influence giving significantly, because religious giving accounts for over one-third (35.5% in 2004) of all charitable giving, the largest single field of interest to donors (Education: 13.6%, Health 8.8%).”
June 8th, 2006 at 4:57 am
Scott L. said: “Nobody has mentioned this, but these data include not just charitie. They include all itemized donations to churchs and TV preachers.”
Scott, I would argue that donations made to some churches or church affiliated organizations qualify as truly beneficent charitable contributions. Others, as you mentioned, such as those made to some TV preachers, are just money scammed from poor saps.
The really sad thing is those itemized “charitable” deductions include contributions to political candidates and political parties. I’m not saying it is bad to contribute, but pumping money into a political party hardly counts as charity.
June 8th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
This might be going off on a tangent, but I can`t help but wonder why “7 of the bottom 8 states are Catholic.”
My own parents said they used to be very generous donors to the Church, but stopped cold after the pedophile scandals. I`m not saying their decision was right or wrong — but if there are othes like my parents, this might explain why Catholics give so much less than other religions (and yes, religions with tithing requirements are naturally going to come out on top).
Does anyone know if donations to “TV preachers” are tax deductible? If not, then they wouldn`t have shown up in this data — but it`s possible some of the larger evangelists do have registered charities. Just wondering.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:22 am
L, Skeptical Catholic, and Scott L, While you three wring your hands over whether “TV preachers” are included, I wonder if this charitable database includes the “benevolent” charitable contributions to Planned Parenthood so that they can better “help” women kill their baby more affordably at a rate of thousands each day. If PP, NOW, NARAL, PETA, EarthFirst, and other liberal groups are included, this may explain why some occassional blue states are included in the charitable half of the list.
June 9th, 2006 at 1:20 am
The point I was making was that the website cited by the original post makes it plain that it does not differentiate between religious contributions and charitable contributions. It says so on the site.
Skeptical, donations to a political candidate or party are not deductible. The only way they would show up on a 1040A is if they were there fraudulently.
And the reason I brought it up in the first place is that I would expect church tithing to be a significant portion of the donations, particularly in the fundamentalist, evangelical, South.
June 9th, 2006 at 3:01 am
CCP, try as you will, you can only squeeze unfounded propaganda out of the generosity index. It is a specious statistic with several elementary errors in its model, as has been pointed out. Clinging to it as a point of truth is sheer ignorance.
June 9th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Actually, I was just asking whether “TV preacher” contributions were tax deductible — not “wringing my hands.” I honestly now little about their kind. I don`t watch them or read about them much.
But I was wringing my hands over why “7 of the bottom 8 states are Catholic,” since most of the Catholics I know are very generous. Even my parents, who stopped giving to the Church, started giving money to their local homeless shelter instead.
June 9th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
L. Religious organizations of any sort are eligible to receive tax deductible donations so long as they qualify as such. A few have fallen astride the IRS when it has been shown that they were actually advocating for political candidates or issues. It is only fair. I cannot set up a church of liberalism and advocate for the election of Russ Feingold as part of my sacrament and still expect to offer tax breaks to my flock. Still, you can damn well bet that a lot of money going to churches in MS, OK, AR, etc., is money well spent in support of the Republican Party.
June 10th, 2006 at 2:49 am
Yes, Katelyn,
I did find the methodology of the Beantown editor - “expected giving” - to be somewhat on the specious side; that would fall under the “love of hometown making the argumnt” school of thought.
I would however note that the index is based on vastly incomplete data: “One flaw in studying itemized charitable deductions: An estimated 70 percent of taxpayers don’t itemize, so what most of the population gives to charity is unknown.”
Quod erat demonstrandum.
:-), StS
June 10th, 2006 at 3:18 am
L,
One website I found Largest Religious Groups in the USA indicates that 36 of the 50 states have the Catholic Church as the largest denomination amongst their population. Since this means 72% of ALL the states are Catholic, perhaps that helps to explain why “7 of the 8 bottom states are Catholic”. Your question is a good one and this doesn’t dismiss your concern, but I thought it dampened some of the “7 out of 8″ hyperbole.
Of further interest is how Catholic voters in those states continue to elect staunchly pro-abortion Catholics such as Senator Kerry, Senator Leahy, Senator Kennedy, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
July 20th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Evis is is evil does.
August 26th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Stalin the Shark
“…they’d better be charitable, because they are on welfare”-nice.
You tell them, New York has almost nil welfare recepients. States should only have money diverted to their own needs. How bogus that Congress forced money from other states to go towards all that rebuilding in New Orleans, other parts of Louisiana, and Mississippi. That couldn’t have affected why so much of taxes goes toward those states at this time. If it did, we don’t want them rtebuilding. They should be moved to a state like New york, where they will get off of welfare, because New York has so little welfare. And we definitely should double check that any money going to helping with 9/11 be replaced.
That mentality is so low.
August 26th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
BTW, welfare was a big thing for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So blame him and his party for it if you don’t like welfare.
He was a son of New York.
August 27th, 2006 at 10:56 am
I realize that this post is almost three months old, but I found an interesting article while looking for more information on the Generosity Index. A different study took more factors into account, and found rather different results. For example:
“When cost of living and tax burden in the area are taken into account, Massachusetts moves from 49th to 11th in terms of charitable giving based on 2002 data and from 44th to 6th based on 2000 data.”
The article can be found at http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/rvp/pubaf/05/CWP_Generosity.html, and the study at http://www.bc.edu/research/swri/features/generosityreport/.