Newport, Rhode Island (Photo by Flickr user Artur Staszewski via Creative Commons license)
In general, Americans are generous people. So much so that 95 percent of U.S. households donate to charity, contributing an average of $2,974 each year.
The United States comes in second (behind Myanmar) in the World Giving Index, with Americans giving more than $358 billion in 2014. Seventy-two percent of that amount came from individual donors.
“Giving has been part of our fiber since the beginning of our country,” Aggie Sweeney, vice chairperson of the Giving USA Foundation, told us back in June 2015. “Americans have always seen giving as an important part of what makes our communities work. In America, we’ve had a belief of taking care of our own and wanting to be able not to only have government take care of things, but to invest in what we feel is really important.”
(Photo by Flickr user
HM Revenue & Customs via Creative Commons license)
But some states are more generous than others when it comes to donating time and/or money.
Residents in Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Oklahoma are among the most giving Americans. Of all the U.S. states, residents in those states donate the highest percentage of their income.
States that give the lowest donated income include Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine and New Jersey, with New Hampshire coming in dead last.
To determine the most generous states, financial website WalletHub assessed the volunteer rate, percentage of the population who donated time and money, and the median contribution to charity.
When assessing all of the above factors, Utah remains the most generous state, while the least charitable state is Rhode Island. Rhode Islanders apparently give the lowest percentage of their income while also donating the least amount of their time.
Click on individual state to see the most and least charitable
It is quite interesting that it is the most liberal and predominantly Democrat controlled states that are the least charitable.
I think it is probable that red state giving is mostly to their churches, and if only giving to secular humanitarian, animal welfare or the arts were counted that the results would be significantly different.
Oh, I don’t know. Texas rates @ 19 and you’ve never seen a worst “Let Them Eat Cake” bunch, they were downright despicable to Katrina refugees.
And as a Texan, I can personally attest to that fact.
It is obvious that church contributions are included as charity.
That is what you are measuring.
Notice that it’s some of the poorest states where people give the most. My grandmother told me that in her time it was the poor who looked after those is the direst straights because nobody else would. It’s a tradition that still lives on it seems.