Poor people give more (as do the connected and the religious)

Poor people give more to charity than rich people … relatively speaking. According to a story in Z24 (Dutch), this is one of the outcomes of a study for a PhD thesis that Pamela Wiepking will present next Monday at VU University in Amsterdam. Wiepking claims the poor tend to give about the same as the rich because both groups have the same idea of what makes a fair donation; and since the poor earn less, what they give is a bigger percentage of their income.

Two other groups that give more according to Wiepking’s research are the well-networked people (they tend to trust others more) and the religious.

See also Wiepking’s 2007 paper “The Philanthropic Poor: In Search of Explanations for the Relative Generosity of Lower Income Households”.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 9:03 pm and is filed under General, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: charity, giving, networking, poor, rich, traits