Conservatives More Compassionate Than Liberals?

A fascinating new book by Arthur Brooks takes a look at statistics on charitable giving from 1996 to 2004. Here are some of his findings:

On average, religious people are far more generous than secularists with their time and money. This is not just because of giving to churches—religious people are more generous than secularists towards explicitly non-religious charities as well. They are also more generous in informal ways, such as giving money to family members, and behaving honestly.

The nonworking poor—those on public assistance instead of earning low wages—give at lower levels than any other group. Meanwhile, the working poor in America give a larger percentage of their incomes to charity than any other income group, including the middle class and rich.

A religious person is 57% more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person.

Conservative households in America donate 30% more money to charity each year than liberal households.

If liberals gave blood like conservatives do, the blood supply in the U.S. would jump by about 45%.

Read an excerpt of the book here and a review of it here.

These finding seem to be getting a lot of attention around the blogosphere.

Where Is Angela writes:

He concludes that religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, both religious and secular.

Brooks’s study found that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families, and reject governmental income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure. Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone’s tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don’t provide them with enough money. Such a way of thinking, he writes, not only shortchanges the nonprofits but also diminishes the positive fallout of giving, including personal health, wealth and happiness for the donor and overall economic growth.

Brooks writes: “For too long, liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice.”

One of the more interesting findings are that people who drink alcohol moderately are more charitable than those who don’t drink.

Jim Lindgren comments:

On balance, I think it is a good book, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have some problems with the argument.

Written for a general educated audience, the book is quite accessible. Even to someone like me who had discovered some of the patterns that Brooks identifies, I found much that I hadn’t seen or thought about. He is much more sanguine about the good that charitable giving does than I would even dream of being. And I hadn’t considered the benefits to the giver (including developing social capital) that Brooks so enthusiastically endorses. But then, my research focuses more on attitudes, than on self-reported behavior.

Lindgren continues in another post with a critique of some of the analysis in the book (emphaisis mine):

There were, however, some things that troubled me.

Although the liberal v. conservative split is the hook for the book, the data are not nearly as stark as the hype surrounding the book might indicate.

The contrast in Who Really Cares is frequently made between liberals (about 30% of the population) and conservatives (about 40% of the population), but I find that often the group that contrasts most strongly with conservatives is not liberals (who share with conservatives higher than average educations), but political moderates (about 30% of the population).

Brooks says that in the continuous dollar model, “conservatives are slightly (but distinguishably) more generous than liberals.” (p. 192) Again, this appears to be literally true. But what the model actually shows is that liberals give significantly more money than moderates, while conservatives give significantly more than both moderates and liberals. Moderates would seem to be the ungenerous ones, not liberals.

Andrew at Statistical Modeling writes:

1. These findings are interesting partly because they don't fit into any simple story: conservatives are more generous, and upper-income people are more generous, but upper-income people give less than lower-income people. Such a pattern is certainly possible--in statistical terms, corr(X,Y)>0, corr(Y,Z)>0, but corr(X,Z)<0)--but it's interesting.

2. Since conservatives are (on average) richer than liberals, I'd like to see the comparison of conservative and liberal donations made as a proportion of income rather than in total dollars.

3. I wonder how the blood donation thing was calculated. Liberals are only 25% of the population, so it's hard to imagine that increasing their blood donations could increase the total blood supply by 45%.

4. The religious angle is interesting too. I'd like to look at how that interacts with religion and ideology.

5. It would also be interesting to see giving as a function of total assets. Income can fluctuate, and you might expect (or hope) that people with more assets would give more.

He ponders further in another post:

Some explanations are "conservatives are nicer than liberals" or "conservatives have more spare cash than liberals" or "conservatives believe in charity as an institution more than liberals." Although I think there's truth to all of the above explanations, I think some insight can be gained by looking at this another way.

My hypothesis, then, is that the groups that give more to charity, and that give more blood, have defaults that more strongly favor this giving. Such defaults are generally implicit (excepting situations such as religions that require tithing), but to the extent that the U.S. has different "subcultures," they could be real.

Steven Levitt and Greg Mankiw also mention this book on their respective blogs.

My Take: My initial impression is that I can believe the findings of the book, but think Lindgren picks up on one of the key insights. Conservatives outgive liberals who outgive moderates. I think a few simple stories would explain these effects.

INDIVIDUALISM VS. COLLECTIVISM: I think contrasting conservatives to liberals, conservatives tend to be focused more on individualistic behavior, whereas liberals tend to focus more on societal or collectivistic behavior. If true, conservatives would probably think more about their own personal giving, whereas liberals would focus on what "society" should give to help the poor.

STRENGTH OF IDEOLOGY: I would posit the hypothesis that people who have strong ideologies regarding giving would be much more likely to feel compelled to give than those with weaker ideologies. Assuming ideology also plays a role in political orientation, it would make sense that people who associate themselves with a political ideology (liberal or conservative), would also have their giving level influenced by their ideology. Moderates would be less ideological in both political orientation and concepts of giving, leading to lower levels of giving.

SOCIAL NETWORKS: There is much evidence to support a strong positive correlation between levels of religious attendance and conservative ideology. High levels of religious attendance also imply stronger social networks within organizations that encourage giving (churches, ministries, etc.). This interaction within these social enviornment encourages habits of generosity, leading to higher levels of giving within this group.

I think all three of these effects play some role in explaining these differences, although I am hesitant to draw too strong of a conclusion regarding the magnitude of these effects

Brooks' book draws out some very interesting conclusions that run counter to the expectations of many. His work also raises some challenging issues that deserve further research from social scientists.