WHO REALLY CARES - Arthur C. Brooks
Is Compassionate Conservatism an Oxymoron?

The conventional wisdom runs like this: Liberals are charitable
because they advocate government redistribution of money in the name
of social justice; conservatives are uncharitable because they oppose
these policies. But note the sleight of hand: Government spending,
according to this logic, is a form of charity.

Let us be clear: Government spending is not charity. It is not a
voluntary sacrifice by individuals. No matter how beneficial or humane
it might be, no matter how necessary it is for providing public
services, it is still the obligatory redistribution of tax revenues.
Because government spending is not charity, sanctimonious yard signs
do not prove that the bearers are charitable or that their opponents
are selfish. (On the contrary, a public attack on the integrity of
those who don't share my beliefs might more legitimately constitute
evidence that I am the uncharitable one.)

To evaluate accurately the charity difference between liberals and
conservatives, we must consider private, voluntary charity. How do
liberals and conservatives compare in their private giving and
volunteering? Beyond strident slogans and sarcastic political
caricatures, what, exactly, do the data tell us?

The data tell us that the conventional wisdom is dead wrong. In most
ways, political conservatives are not personally less charitable than
political liberals-they are more so.

First, we must define "liberals" and "conservatives." Most surveys ask
people not just about their political party affiliation but also about
their ideology. In general, about 10 percent of the population
classify themselves as "very conservative"; and another 10 percent
call themselves "very liberal." About 20 percent say they are simply
"liberal," and 30 percent or so say they are "conservative." The
remaining 30 percent call themselves "moderates" or "centrists." In
this discussion, by "liberals" I mean the approximately 30 percent in
the two most liberal categories, and by conservatives I mean the 40
percent or so in the two most con­servative categories.

So how do liberals and conservatives compare in their charity? When it
comes to giving or not giving, conservatives and liberals look a lot
alike. Conservative people are a percentage point or two more likely
to give money each year than liberal people, but a percentage point or
so less likely to volunteer.

But this similarity fades away when we consider average dollar amounts
donated. In 2000, households headed by a conservative gave, on
average, 30 percent more money to charity than households headed by a
liberal ($1,600 to $1,227). This discrepancy is not simply an artifact
of income differences; on the contrary, liberal families earned an
average of 6 percent more per year than conservative families, and
conservative families gave more than liberal families within every
income class, from poor to middle class to rich.

If we look at party affiliation instead of ideology, the story remains
largely the same. For example, registered Republicans were seven
points more likely to give at least once in 2002 than registered
Democrats (90 to 83 percent).

The differences go beyond money and time. Take blood donations, for
example. In 2002, conservative Americans were more likely to donate
blood each year, and did so more often, than liberals. If liberals and
moderates gave blood at the same rate as conservatives, the blood
supply in the United States would jump by about 45 percent.

The political stereotypes break down even further when we consider
age: "Anyone who is not a socialist before age thirty has no heart,
but anyone who is still a socialist after thirty has no head," goes
the old saying. And so we imagine crusty right-wing grandfathers
socking their money away in trust funds while their liberal
grandchildren work in soup kitchens and save the whales. But young
liberals-perhaps the most vocally dissatisfied political constituency
in America today-are one of the least generous demographic groups out
there. In 2004, self-described liberals younger than thirty belonged
to one-third fewer organizations in their communities than young
conservatives. In 2002, they were 12 percent less likely to give money
to charities, and one-third less likely to give blood. Liberal young
Americans in 2004 were also significantly less likely than the young
conservatives to express a willingness to sacrifice for their loved
ones: A lower percentage said they would prefer to suffer than let a
loved one suffer, that they are not happy unless the loved one is
happy, or that they would sacrifice their own wishes for those they
love.

The compassion of American conservatives becomes even clearer when we
compare the results from the 2004 U.S. presidential election to data
on how states address charity. Using Internal Revenue Service data on
the percentage of household income given away in each state, we can
see that the red states are more charitable than the blue states. For
instance, of the twenty-five states that donated a portion of
household income above the national average, twenty-four gave a
majority of their popular votes to George W. Bush for president; only
one gave the election to John F. Kerry. Of the twenty-five states
below the national giving average, seventeen went for Kerry, but just
seven for Bush. In other words, the electoral map and the charity map
are remarkably similar.

These results are not an artifact of close elections in key states.
The average percentage of household income donated to charity in each
state tracked closely with the percentage of the popular vote it gave
to Mr. Bush. Among the states in which 60 percent or more voted for
Bush, the average portion of income donated to charity was 3.5
percent. For states giving Mr. Bush less than 40 percent of the vote,
the average was 1.9 percent. The average amount given per household
from the five states combined that gave Mr. Bush the highest vote
percentages in 2003 was 25 percent more than that donated by the
average household in the five northeastern states that gave Bush his
lowest vote percentages; and the households in these liberal-leaning
states earned, on average, 38 percent more than those in the five
conservative states.

People living in conservative states volunteer more than people in
liberal states. In 2003, the residents of the top five "Bush states"
were 51 percent more likely to volunteer than those of the bottom
five, and they volunteered an average of 12 percent more total hours
each year. Residents of these Republican-leaning states volunteered
more than twice as much for religious organizations, but also far more
for secular causes. For example, they were more than twice as likely
to volunteer to help the poor.

Surely Jimmy Carter would have been surprised to learn that the
selfish Americans he criticized so vociferously were most likely the
very people who elected him president.


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Arthur C. Brooks is Professor of Public Administration and Director of
the Nonprofit Studies Program at Syracuse University's Maxwell School
of Citizenship and Public Affairs. In 2007, he will be a Visiting
Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He holds a PhD and MPhil
in policy analysis, and an MA and BA in economics. Over the past eight
years, Mr. Brooks has published approximately 100 articles and books
on the connections between culture, politics, and economic life in
America.