Very interesting! This highlights a number of issues. They mention 2% of GDP is charity. But I believe not all GDP shows up as gross household income. And typically EAs use pretax income (adjusted gross income in the United States), which is lower than gross household income. Some surveys use ādisposable incomeā, which is probably even lower than pretax income. So there could easily be a factor of two difference here, and indeed this study found 3.6% average giving (though it was only of people with household income greater than $80,000 per year). There is also the question of whether mean % donations should be person-weighted or donation-weighted (the latter would agree with the GDP number better). But in other studies, I think Iāve seen that even in low income groups, average giving is still over 1%. Some have even claimed that higher income people give a lower percent of their money, but I am skeptical of this. So Iām not sure whatās going on here.
Very interesting! This highlights a number of issues. They mention 2% of GDP is charity. But I believe not all GDP shows up as gross household income. And typically EAs use pretax income (adjusted gross income in the United States), which is lower than gross household income. Some surveys use ādisposable incomeā, which is probably even lower than pretax income. So there could easily be a factor of two difference here, and indeed this study found 3.6% average giving (though it was only of people with household income greater than $80,000 per year). There is also the question of whether mean % donations should be person-weighted or donation-weighted (the latter would agree with the GDP number better). But in other studies, I think Iāve seen that even in low income groups, average giving is still over 1%. Some have even claimed that higher income people give a lower percent of their money, but I am skeptical of this. So Iām not sure whatās going on here.