By and large, the US is a giving nation, ranking second overall in the 2015’s World Giving Index. The majority of American households, 95.4%, donate to charities, and each contributes an annual average of $2,974.
But not all US states give equally. This holiday season, the consumer financial information site WalletHub set out to examine the most and least generous of the 50 states, “in the spirit of inspiring more Americans to increase their charitable giving”.
The most giving state was Utah, and the least giving was Rhode Island. Maryland and Idaho came second and third in most giving, while Louisiana and California made up the second and third least charitable states. (Maybe the Zuckerberg-Chan announcement will change that.)
To calculate the most and least giving states in the US, WalletHub analyzed each state across eight key metrics – including volunteer rate, the percentage of population who claimed to have donated time and money and the median contribution to charity – and each metric was given a value from 1 to 100, with 100 being the best.
The site used data from multiple sources, including the US Census Bureau, the National Center for Charitable Statistics and the Internal Revenue Service and Gallup.
It should be noted that survey respondents often lie when answering sensitive questions to make themselves look better, something known as the “social desirability bias”.
States such as New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey received composite scores on the lower end (22.82, 22.98 and 23.47, respectively) showing that residents didn’t donate as much, despite having some of the richest areas in the country.
WalletHub also found that red states were more generous than blue states.
Religion might explain why Utah residents were so giving. Mormons, who make up about 60% of Utah’s adult population, are asked to donate 10% of their income to “move forward the work of the Church”, according to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints website.
But the report didn’t offer any hypotheses as to why some states appeared more humbug than other, leaving competitive Americans to speculate wildly.
