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[Spoonist]

Spoonist, can I get a source on the charitable giving claim? The only per capita stats I could find on a quick search were from almost a decade ago, and paint a different picture than you do, but I'm not confident in my source.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=236671

Spoonist, can I get a source on the charitable giving claim? The only per capita stats I could find on a quick search were from almost a decade ago, and paint a different picture than you do, but I'm not confident in my source.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=236671

This is actually quite harder to show then one would think. This because statistics about stuff like this is very sketchy. But I'll give it a try.

Lets start with one event where we do have "solid" statistics and which was in the global media. The 2004 Tsunami. I've included both Governement funds and non-goverment+public. I do this to show that the gov and the people are similar, in that those govs who spend most also have people who spend the most. With two exceptions 1) the middle-east where islam makes the private aid high while governement aid is low when compared to their GDP 2)eastern asia where most private aid is domestic and its almost only govs that give aid outside the country
GDP's from here


Country GDP Gov M USD GDP% NGOs & Public GDP%
Australia 617,607 1099 0,1779% 223,4 0,0362%
Canada 995,833 429,2 0,0431% 215,3 0,0216%
Denmark 242,344 74 0,0305% 36 0,0149%
Finland 186,175 65,3 0,0351% 24,2 0,0130%
Germany 2706,673 679 0,0251% 580 0,0214%
Norway 250,444 175,3 0,0700% 89,8 0,0359%
Sweden 346,531 72,2 0,0208% 159 0,0459%
United States 11733,475 950 0,0081% 1875 0,0160%
I also included Germany, Canada and Australia to show some other relations.
Australia because it was close to the disaster acted extremely rapidly and was one of the most generous non-affected nations globally. It's gov went way above any expectations.
Germany to show that it's not exclusive for scandinavia but northern europe as a whole, southern europe is a bit different story.
Canada just because they are nice people and close to the US.
Now there are some big uncertainties in the numbers, but since its a couple of multipliers for US numbers to even come close, I'd say that we don't need to cover that.
The same pattern emerges whenever there are statistics for certain disasters, norway+sweden has big contributions by the public, the US has small, when compared to GDP or GDP per capita.

Then lets hit your google answer thing.
First thing I notice is that its a spanish pdf showing that spanish gives most of all and doesn't include denmark sweden norway. So I'm guessing that it is based on charities for north africa, where spain is a huge contributor.
Then it's in euro per capita, that means that relatively poorer countries like romania (97th country GDP PPP) are compared to very rich countries like sweden (21st country GDP PPP) norway (8th country GDP PPP) and US (12th country GDP PPP). Such a comparison is very unfair, in favor of rich countries.
Also the pdf doesn't work.

Then there are same damning factors for the US even if they would give the same %GDP PPP amount, which they don't.
That is that the US doesn't really give aid unconditionally.
The gov aid from US comes with two conditions 1) only given to politically aligned nations 2) the aid must be purchased from US firms, sometimes even a specific firm.
The public charities from the US is mostly religious, their aid comes with some even bigger conditions. And Bush removed a lot of the inspection requirements on specificly religious charities. So a lot of the aid in the statistics claimed from the US goes to bibles, churches and preachers, not food and investments.

Then, a note on GDP PPP, in the nordic countries taxes are much much higher than in the US, so the dispensible income of middle-wage-earners are less. So they are giving a larger % of their disposable income.

Then while we are on taxes, in the US its tax deductable to give to non-profit orgs while that is not the case in Scandinavia.
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,, ... 90,00.html

Now, mind that the US has some mind-boggling inequality and domestic issues, which makes charitable americans more likely to give money to domestic causes, where scandinavian countries usually wouldn't need to.

Was that enough for a cursory thingie?

[Questor]

Yup. My request was more because the best thing I could find was, shall we say, useless, than because I didn't necessarily agree with you. I was just curious if you had anything better.