people who gave generously were in absolute or relative poverty?
A study reported in 2001 discovered that relatively poor people give more
generously to charity than those with greater wealth. The project, entitled “The
Widow’s Might: How Charities Depend on the Poor”, was conducted by Beth
Egan of the Social Market Foundation, who examined the contributions of over
1000 individuals to ten British charities. It was found that although richer people
gave more money in absolute terms, this comprised a smaller proportion of their
overall income than was the case for the poor: in other words, the lower a
person’s income, the more of their earnings they donated to charity. For example,
those with an annual income of under £5000 gave away an average of 4.5% in
donations, whereas for those with salaries of over £40,000, the figure was only
2%. The journalist Lucy Ward suggests that this challenges the assumption most
of us hold that charities redistribute income from the rich to the poor: instead it
would seems that charitable organisations rely upon those in relative poverty to
support the most needy. Furthermore, there is a gender difference insofar as
women are more likely to give to charity in general, but when men do contribute,
they donate a higher proportion of their income. People born after 1950 were also
found to be less generous in their donations than those born during or before
World War II, which reveals an interesting shift in values between generations.
Source: “Poor give more generously than the rich”, Lucy Ward, The Guardian, 21
December 2001, p.8)
Questions:
1. Why do you think people with less money would give more of it away to
charity than those who have more?
2. What do the findings suggest about the way people in different social classes
spend their disposable income?
3. Do you think that these poor people who gave generously were in absolute or
relative poverty?
4. How might we explain the gendered patterns of donating behaviour?
5. How might the study’s methods have been limited, in terms of the kinds of
charitable donations that the researcher ignored?
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