1-18-06

I Think You're Both Wrong

About a week ago I was listening to the Rush Limbaugh program (yes, I listen to Rush, even when he's full of shit, he's entertaining), and he was talking about a study that disproved the commonly-held myth that Liberals (by which he meant Democrats) are more generous than Conservatives (by which he meant Republicans).  The study, he said showed that not only do the citizens of Blue States (those in which the majority voted for Kerry) make more money than the inhabitants of Red States (those which voted for Bush), they also donate less to charity.  This, I thought, is interesting, and deserves further study.
          To be fair, while I remember having a vague conviction (when I was a Liberal) that all Republicans are wealthy, greedy plutocrats who would rather kick a starving child than feed him, I don't remember ever actually saying so.  And, while I have listened to vague insinuations from Democrat demagogues to the effect that Republican programs only exist to feed the fat wallets of fellow fat Republicans, I've never had anyone I knew to be a Democrat accuse me of being a member of that particular club.  So I had to do some thinking about whether or not the myth actually existed or whether it was just a generality flung into the pool of "common knowledge".
          So I was intrigued, and I did a little searching.  What I found is that there are two studies out there regarding the states and their relative generosity as measured by charitable donations.  The older one, the one that Limbaugh cited, is prepared by the Catalogue for Philanthropy in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  They essentially took income tax data, applied some sort of statistical voodoo to the numbers and came up with indices that ranked the states by "Having", "Giving", and then "Generosity".  The newer study, by The Boston Foundation, expands on the original indexes arcane methods by trying to also factor in variables regarding cost of living.  This is understandable:  Boston and Massachusetts in general have taken a few hits in the original since the first index was released in 1997.  They consistently rank in the bottom five.  The TBF study, however, flips the index upside down, and most of the states that showed high rankings on the original show low rankings on the Boston and vice versa.
          I decided they're both soft.  Don't get me wrong, any index based on income tax deductions is going to be soft, because of the nature of Federal Income Tax forms.  In order to claim charitable donations you have to file form 1040 (the long form) and not 1040-A (the short form that most people file); doing this generally demands that the person or family filing has income from some source other than a regular job that withholds tax funds.  Even of those who file the long form, only a few claim their deductible donations, because, quite frankly, the standard deduction is a hell of a high mark to reach.  In fifteen years filing Form 1040, I think my wife and I have yet to itemize.  Tax deductible donations also ignore the many tiny charitable contributions that people make every day but don't (or can't, because there's not usually a receipt) claim or even consider claiming.  Also there is some question how much of one's charitable donations are actually charity; chapter 501(c)(3) of the US Tax code offers up a long list of charitable organizations, not all of which might be considered philanthropic by everyone.  So the base numbers themselves are pretty iffy.
          The problem is, both studies exacerbate the problem by adding in "adjustments" to put the already-soft numbers "in context".  The CfP study makes huge statistical leaps in trying to eliminate the gulf between what people actually give and what some of them say they give.  The Boston index essentially begins with the CfP numbers then adds their own formulae to account for differences in the cost of living in the various states (entirely ignoring the widely-held belief that cost-of-living is a function of average income).  What they ended up with, both of them, by piling assumptions on top of soft numbers, was an amazingly soft set of numbers that could have been used to make any assertion anyone wanted ever.
          So I decided to make my own.  I took the original tax numbers that CfP used, and, without adjusting them for anything, I did a straight figuring of the percentage of gross income that each state claims on their taxes as a deduction (I did some other figures because I like to play with numbers).  I actually got a few surprises on what I call the Casual Notice Generosity Index.  For one thing, the 19 Blue (Democrat) States (from the last Presidential election), with 49.5 per cent of the filed returns, claimed about $671 billion more in income than the 31 Red (Republican) States did in 2000; they also claimed $11 billion more in charitable donations.
          However, when those donations are seen as a percentage of the gross, the Red States edged the Blue states out, by about 0.68%.  The rankings shifted a little from the results of either of the real studies, too.  Massachusetts settled near the middle; my own adopted home state of Texas sank from a comfortable position near the top to the bottom of the middle.  Utah came in first with 4.95% of the state's AGI going to charity;  West Virginia came in last, with 1.28%.  Have a look and see where your state sits.  But don't take it too seriously.  The numbers are, as I said, very soft.