Generosity In Canada And The United States: The 2011 Generosity Index
Generosity in Canada and the United States: The 2011 Generosity Index
Generosity in Canada and the United States: The 2011 Generosity Index
In comparing charitable giving among and between Canadian and American jurisdictions, researchers at the Fraser Institute, a free
marketplace think tank in Canada, found that trends over the past decade continue to hold vigorous. Among the trends, all Canadian provinces and territories have continued to be drastically outstripped by American states in charitable giving by a big margin. In both of the standard measures of giving (percentage of tax filers who report having given) and the macro
share of aggregate income that was donated, Americans out-give Canadians.
More
than 26 percent of American tax filers donated to charity in 2009 (the most prevailing
year for which data is available), compared to 23 percent of Canadians.
On a countrywide
basis, Americans gave 1.32 percent of their aggregate personal income to charity, more
than double the 0.64 percent that Canadians donated.
Had Canadians matched the generosity of their American neighbors by donating the same percentage of
comprehensive
income, Canadian charities would have received an extra $8.3 billion in private donations in 2009.
These national differences are
big enough that broad comparisons can be made regarding the giving behavior of Americans and Canadians; specifically, Americans are on the whole better-quality generous than their northern neighbors. Though
, this should now shroud the substantial variability between jurisdictions within each country.
Among Canadian provinces, Manitoba had both the highest percentage of tax filers donating to registered charity (26.0 percent) and the highest percentage of
international
income donated (0.89 percent); meanwhile, Quebec again ranked lowest in both measures.
Similarly in the United States, Utah was by far the most generous jurisdiction with 33.4 percent of tax filers donating 3.09 percent of the
inclusive
income earned in the state.
The figures for Utah far exceed even the second-place state, Maryland, in which
solitary 1.67 percent of total
income was donated.
