When going gets rough, the poor get giving Study: They’re more generous in tough times
May 25th, 2009 by Afiya
WASHINGTON — When Jody Richards saw a homeless man begging outside a downtown Washington, D.C., McDonald’s recently, he bought the man a cheeseburger.
There’s nothing unusual about that, except that Richards is homeless, too, and the 99-cent cheeseburger was an outsize chunk of the $9.50 he had earned that day panhandling.
The generosity of poor people isn’t so much rare as rarely noticed, however.
In fact, America’s poor people donate more, in percentage terms, than higher-income groups do, surveys of charitable giving show. What’s more, their generosity declines less in hard times than the generosity of richer givers does.
“The lowest-income fifth” of the population always give “at more than their capacity,” said Virginia Hodgkinson, former vice president for research at Independent Sector, a Washington-based association of major nonprofit agencies. “The next two-fifths give at capacity, and those above that are capable of giving two or three times more than they give.”
Indeed, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest survey of consumer expenditure found that the poorest fifth of America’s households contributed an average of 4.3% of their incomes to charitable organizations in 2007. The richest fifth gave at less than half that rate, 2.1%.
Poor people ‘not scared of poverty’
The figures probably undercount remittances by legal and illegal immigrants to family and friends back home, a multibillion-dollar outlay to which poor people contribute disproportionally.
None of the middle fifths of America’s households, in contrast, gave away as much as 3% of their incomes.
Herbert Smith, 31, a Seventh-day Adventist who said he tithed his $1,010 monthly disability check — giving away 10% of it — said he believes poor people give more because, in some ways, they worry less about their money.
“We’re not scared of poverty the way rich people are,” he said. “We know how to get the lights back on when we can’t pay the electric bill.”
In terms of income, the poorest fifth seem like unlikely benefactors. Their pretax household incomes averaged $10,531 in 2007, according to the BLS survey, compared with $158,388 for the top fifth.
RAISING KIDS WHO GIVE
Years of looking into which youth experiences best predict giving by adults offer some clues. Independent Sector, a group of major nonprofit organizations, found the activities below were most closely linked to adult generosity. Respondents named multiple activities so the order is not exact:
• Seeing an admired person who isn’t a family member help others.
• Seeing a family member help others.
• Doing volunteer work.
• Raising money door-to-door.
• Being active in student government.
• Belonging to a youth group, such as the Boy Scouts.
• Being active in a religious organization.
• Being helped by others.
The biggest deterrent to generosity: not seeing a family member help others.
