Why Do Wealthier People Give Less to Religious Organizations?

Just goes to show that religion is for controlling the poor masses.

My hypothesis is that it’s for the same reason that most lottery tickets are sold to the same group – because religious tithes, like lotteries, are a tax on the stupid. This means people who can’t identify a sucker deal when they see it.

If you’d like it in the language of statistics: Wealth and intelligence generally correlate positively, and religiosity and intelligence generally correlate negatively. Thus, the wealthier you are, the less likely you are to be suckered into giving your money to religion. Your charitable impulses are more likely to be directed toward things with visible results – and that’s exactly what this data is showing us.

I know this is sort of politically incorrect, but the hypothesis does fit the data.

By the way, my preferred charity is Smile Train, providing free cleft palate surgery for impoverished children worldwide to help them have normal lives. Virtually all donations go to program, not to further fundraising.

I like Smile Train as well.

My hypothesis:

Wealthier people are more likely to be better-educated, and education and income have a negative correlation to religious belief, hence less donations to religious charities among the rich. Instead, wealthier individuals, more likely to have undergone higher education and reaped its rewards, are more likely to appreciate its value, as with the arts, they are more likely to have the time and money to enjoy them than less wealthy individuals.

People give money to things they care about, and people care about the things that are in their lives. If you look at all the areas of giving in this light, it starts to make perfect sense. For poorer folks, Church is a social circle and a network in hard times. The more money you have, the more art you immerse yourself in – poor people rarely encounter art in their day to day lives, so why would they care? Rich people have just about everything else, so research to solve the one thing they can’t guard against – sickness and death – starts to eat up more and more of their money. Basic needs, education – it all follows the trend of ‘donate to what is most important to me personally.’

I have nothing to add to the conversation, but when you said “Why is this the case?”
I got a total mental image of Professor Julius Sumner Miller.

Charities tend to be about addressing symptoms (“giving a man a fish”), not causes. People who are used to looking at economics from a different perspective might be more focused on self-sustaining ways to combat the world’s ills (“teach a man to fish”), which in essence means finding for-profit ways of addressing them.

For poorer folks, Church is a social circle and a network in hard times.

I think this may be a key point. The well-off in this country can afford to pay for meals when they are ill, etc.. The poor can’t, but, their church may have a group to visit the ill with meals or other support, may have a fund to help members temporarily, may have a big room/kitchen (paid for by donations over the years) that members can use for free or cheaply for a social event. Some churches fleece their sheep, but, some are run by their sheep.

BTW, It looks like the clergy housing allowance exemption is stirring a few ripples in the church world.

Claudia: “More than wealth, I would bet education level is a better predictor of “intelligence”, since current intelligence tests are unable to really separate themselves from education.”

Since education and intelligence correlate positively (how could they not, if what you say is true?), and wealth and education also correlate positively, I’m okay with that. It’s one or two more steps to get to the same point.

Educated people tend to be less religious.

Wealthy people tend to be educated.

Ergo, wealthier people tend to be less religious.

Maybe because under 100k a year, that twenty you throw in the collection plate in order to not be seen as a freeloader by the next family over on the pew is a considerably larger proportion of your income?

This isn’t a difficult question, is it? Church is a social club, but one where your membership fee is treated as a charitable donation. If we treated gym membership fees as charitable donations, then gym memberships would be a large part of donations in that income group as well, but we don’t.

Wealthy people are generally wealthier as a result of being more materialistic, which seems like it would be counter to most religious belief.

Wealth and intelligence generally correlate positively,

Which is why George W. Bush is such a rocket scientist.

Right. I stack that up to celebrities being the least likely to get big paychecks due to skill or intellect.

I don’t think the data presented is sufficient to draw many conclusions. I think a better set of data would show, for donations to religious organizations, 1) what percent is coming from each income group, 2) the percent of people in each income group that give and 3) average “gift size” for each income group.

My intuition tells me the above data can be explained simply by amount of discretionary income. An analogy would be percent of income spent on groceries. The lowest-income group will spend a much larger share of income on groceries than the highest-income group. The higher-income group spends more on “luxury” items, including non-religious giving. As giving increases with rising income it also diversifies to non-religious giving which, by definition, will reduce the percent of overall giving allotted to religious organizations.

An interesting question: Do people see religious giving as a “basic necessity” and non-religious giving as a “luxury”? I think the data might be suggesting that.

Maybe wealthy people have more time to investigate how their donations are spent? I looked up my old church’s last financial statement. Less than 20% of the parish’s income went towards charitable disbursements. Over 60% was spent on parish staff salaries and improvements to the building.

I always look an organization up on Charity Navigator before giving money, and there’s no way in hell I’d donate to a charity that spent more than half its income on administrative costs.

Speaking as someone who works as a fundraiser in the non-profit world, I think a some of you are thinking in the wrong direction and missing a more obvious answer.

Health/Education/Arts organizations actively seek out large donations from people with the means to give them. In some cases a fund development office will spend years or decades working to land a $500,000, $1 Million, or $50 Million gift from a single individual.

On the other hand, churches, temples, mosques, etc., (and I’m assuming they make up a good bulk of the ‘religious organizations’ category) tend to ask a larger group of people for more modest donations on a more regular schedule – a group which statistically is going to be made up of a lot more people in the lower income brackets than in the $1 million+ a year brackets.

And even if one of those people sitting in the pews does make a $1 Million+ a year and gives a seemingly generous weekly contribution of $1,000 to the collection plate, it will still take almost 20 years to equal the $1 million gift they gave the local hospital in order to name a room in memory of their parents.

To clarify, people are more likely to give if they are asked (even indirectly, like in the case of a collection plate). As well, people tend to give donations to organizations they feel they have a strong connection to. In the case of a lot of religious organizations, people voluntarily show up on a weekly basis to build those very connections. While some people might feel that same type of connection to the art gallery or museum they visit with their family a couple times a year; or about the college where they spent 4 years working towards their B.A.; or the hospital they went for that knee replacement, most people won’t. So, professional and volunteer fundraisers step in to build those connections in a variety of different ways.

As much as most fundraisers would love to have the time and resources to build those connections with every single person who comes in contact with their institution, reality generally makes that difficult… unless you’re an organization that people go to specifically to build spiritual and social bonds, like a church. (“Should I give the $25 I am able to donate to the art gallery I visit once a year, or to the church that I go to every week to hear about how they are my only path to salvation from a world full of sin/an afterlife of eternal torment?”)

So while religious organizations are able to rely on large amounts of regular, smaller donations from across all four income groups represented in the chart above, most non-religious non-profits tend to put their biggest efforts into securing large gifts from a smaller group of people with the capacity to give at higher levels. (“Well, my pastor is still impressed by the $1,000 a week I have been putting in the collection plate for the last ten years, so I see no reason I can’t give the art gallery the $2,500,000 they asked me for. After all, I’ve been a guest of honour at their gala dinner for the last 3 years, I’ve been on several private tours with the lead curator, and they’ve even asked me to join their Visitor Advisory Council.”)

(I feel I should acknowledge that yes, churches do sometimes embark on major campaigns where they try and solicit larger gifts for big project e.g. repairing a steeple, installing a new stained glass window. And, at the same time, some secular non-profits derive most of their income from a large number of small gift appeals e.g. unaddressed mail-outs, pledge drives. But in both cases these are the exceptions rather than the rule.)

These are very interesting statistics. I think wealthy people tend to give less to religious charities and more to charities like Smile Train and like humanitarian organizations. Why? I don’t know exactly, more money usually means more education, thus being more well versed in worldly matters?