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Charity Map

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by

mwkruse
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On Thursday, I reviewed Arthur Brooks's book Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. The basic summary of Brook's findings is:

…imagine two people: One goes to church every week and strongly rejects the idea that it is government’s responsibility to redistribute income between people who have a lot of money and people who don’t. The other person never attends a house of worship, and strongly believes that the government should reduce income differences. Knowing only these things, the data tell us that the first person will be roughly twice as likely as the second to give money to charities in a given year, and will give away more than one hundred times as much money per year (as well as fifty times more to explicitly nonreligious causes). (10)

Regular readers know my love of graphs and maps. Brooks provides two fascinating maps on page 23, which I have recreated below. The first is the electoral map for the 2004 presidential election. The second map divides the nation into the 25 states above average in per capita charitable giving and the 25 below average. Notice any similarities?

Wrckerrybush

Wrcgiving

Comments

10 responses to “Charity Map”

  1. Peter Kirk Avatar
    Peter Kirk

    It would be interesting to see a similar map for church attendance. The implicit message of these maps is misleading, for as you showed previously there is in fact little correlation between political views and charitable giving, if religious differences are factored out of the equation.

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  2. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    I don’t think it’s misleading so much as it shows another implication of religious differences. I suspect you would indeed see a similar map if we plotted church attendance. The question is the direction of causality between the variables.
    Brooks selected people for his core analysis that answered in a polarized way about church attendance and position on government assistance. That gives four types:
    Religious Conservatives = 19.1%
    Secular Conservatives = 7.3%
    Secular Liberals = 10.5%
    Religious Liberals = 6.4%
    Note that this totals 43.3%. More than half the population falls into none of these categories. (ex. Some may strongly oppose government redistribution but attend church once a month. Others may be indifferent about government redistribution but attend church weekly. Still others may be relatively indifferent about redistribution and attend church less than weekly.)
    Also, note the 3 to 1 distribution of Religious people toward the conservative end. Therefore, where you find high concentrations of people who attend church weekly you would expect to find elections favoring the party that most matches with the Religious Conservative’s suspicion of government redistribution. The Republican Party is the party (at least in theory) that shares this skepticism. You would also expect to find high levels of charity. Therefore, we can hypothesize that wherever we find Republican dominance we will also find above average charity. The map shows that indeed Republican voting and high rates of giving correlate well. Similarly, Republicans tend to be more religious and Democrats tend to be more secular.
    Religious people are highly charitable. Religious people are skewed toward those who doubt the effectiveness of government redistribution. I think the primary (not exclusive) causal direction is that religiosity influences charity and political action. The maps indirectly support that.

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  3. nate Avatar
    nate

    Mike,
    I think your last post from the book was more helpful in this one. I think there is a real myth in progressive circles that religious conservatives don’t care about the poor, etc and don’t give to support it. Exploding that myth is helpful for progressive religious folks (I prolly fit there.)
    This map seems to suggest republicans give more then democrats. Which may be true … but the question is why. Is it because they are conservative or because they are religious?
    Based on the data, are these two theories at least equally likely:
    1) Religious people tend to give more then non religious.
    2) Conservatives tend to give more then liberals.
    Which caused which? There are good statistical models for suggesting causality, were any of those applied?
    Nate

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  4. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Nate, I think your first option is the answer:
    “1) Religious people tend to give more then non religious.”
    Nevertheless, conservatives tend to give more than liberals, because religious people tend be drawn to the conservative position.
    Let me turn the question another way. Republicans are frequently cast as being pro-life. So what caused these people to vote Republican?
    1) Religious people tend to vote more pro-life.
    2) Conservatives tend to vote more pro-life.
    Again I think the first answer is the more likely one.
    Still, religious people (attend church once a week) are more pro-life and tend to vote in greater numbers for those who champion this position. Republicans champion this position. We have no problems saying Republicans are pro-life.
    Religious people tend to practice in charitable giving and oppose redistribution, and they vote for those who champion these positions. Yet we are reticent to say Republicans are more charitable. Why? (I’m not trying to belligerent here. Just pointing up what seems to me to be an incongruity.)
    We can say that religion is the driving force in charitable giving. But we can also acknowledge that by Republicans championing limited government, charity, and volunteerism, they drew people of like mind to them. They didn’t end up with a more charitable constituency by random selection but through intentionality. Therefore I think it is equally appropriate to say that religion is the driving force behind charity and that Republicans tend to be more giving.

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  5. Peter Kirk Avatar
    Peter Kirk

    I still have an issue with your statement “Religious people are skewed toward those who doubt the effectiveness of government redistribution”, and your suggestion that there is a causal link here. This skewing may indeed be true in the USA; I doubt if it is true in the UK where much of the church tends to be associated with left of centre politics, and where even that centre is well to the left of the US centre. This suggests that the link may not be causal, but rather may reflect something in the social and religious history and geography of the USA. In the different UK situation, it might well be that there is a similar map effect but reversed, i.e. with more charitable giving from Labour rather than Conservative areas, simply because the former may be more religious. Of course the statistics would have to adjusted for the relative poverty of Labour areas, but the same adjustment should really have been done to the US maps.

    Reply
  6. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    When I wrote “Religious people are skewed toward…” I thought from the context it would be understood that I was talking about religious people in the US. I feel certain we would find variations from culture to culture. I believe I interpret Brooks correctly to say that studies in Europe show that high church attendance corresponds with charitable giving. However, I don’t think he offers any info on what position frequent church attendees in European nations take on redistribution. (And I’d expect that would vary between European nations.)
    You wrote, “This suggests that the link may not be causal, but rather may reflect something in the social and religious history and geography of the USA.” I think this is an important point. It will be true of any population we look at. Our religious views do not form in a vacuum but rather in a cultural context. I think we should be clear that because the majority of religious people in the US oppose significant redistribution it does not mean that they have adopted a biblical position or the best social policy even though it may emerge from their Christian values. Multiple variables impinging on each other is the stuff of real life.
    What Brooks does suggest, and I have seen it elsewhere, is that across cultures regular worship attendance fosters charity. Charity does indeed seem to spring from the Christian gospel. In the American context, most charitable folks seem to see redistribution as a threat to a culture of charitable giving. In the UK, folks may see redistribution as a partner to charity. Opposite conclusions about redistribution can be grounded in the same ethic of charity depending on context. Who is right? I’m not sure it matters in determining if the religious influence is there. Am I making any sense?

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  7. nate Avatar
    nate

    Mike,
    Thanks for clearing this up. One quick nit pick, Republicans have made aborition a central issue in their campeigns, party platforms, and fundraising. I don’t think they have done the same for charity.
    Nate

    Reply
  8. Peter Kirk Avatar
    Peter Kirk

    Thank you, Michael. We don’t really seem to disagree when we look at this carefully. What we lack in Europe is the large sector of American society which has fled from governmental and religious persecution and has a deep-seated suspicion of governments and desire to be independent. I suspect that these Americans tend to live in the red areas on your maps. They are more religious than the average because some fled for religious reasons and others are heirs of 19th century revivals, whereas your blue areas probably have a lot more recent immigrants with less religious backgrounds.
    I realise now that my comments suggesting that the map of the UK might be reversed are significantly over-simplified, but I don’t think this is the place to go into further details.

    Reply
  9. nate Avatar
    nate

    For those that wanted a map of religiosity (at least self reporting religiosity) check here:
    http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/07/the-map-of-fait.html

    Reply
  10. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Peter, America was formed from a combination of folks seeking religious and economic freedom, as well as obnoxious troublemakers who couldn’t get along with folks anywhere else. *grin* Seriously, I think you raise interesting questions.
    Nate, thanks for the link to the map! I will link that here. I love maps! There is a US map by counties that has been updated a couple of times over the years showing counties by denominational affiliation. If 25% or more of folks repor being of a denom., then that county was colored to that denoms color. If it as 50% or more they colored county plus but hash marks through it. It was fascitinating to see the distribution of denoms througout the US. The map you linked reminded me of that thanks.

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