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Giving Index
I think this generosity index for 2004, put out by the Catalogue for Philanthropy is a bit flawed. Some one at work posted this and I tried to get someone to defend it but I couldn't.

I don't get it. Mississippi had 240,993 charitable returns with a population of 2,881,281. Massachusetts had 1,142,584 charitable returns with a population of 6,433,422 (you want to look at the stats in the generosity excel file). So 8% of Mississippi's population gave and 17% of my state's population gave. And we are the ones that aren't generous? Am I missing something here?

It seems like less people donated more in Mississippi than Massachusetts. The index only takes into account people that actually gave. Actually with a population of 2.8 million and about 1 million (Thousands? They aren't really consistent. For one column they list it in thousands of dollars (so a million is a billion) and in the other one they don't. I think it is in thousands) in charitable donations it comes out to about $375 dollars per person given. In Massachusetts, with a population of 6.4 million and charitable donations at over 3 million (again, it's billion) it comes out to about $478 per person.

The reason Massachusetts' "index" is so low is because we make more per person (all people) but give less per person that gave. Right? Am I making a mistake here because I'm using per person donations but not using per capita income? If my second point falls through then the first point still holds true. Twice as many people percentage wise gave in Massachusetts versus Mississippi. But of those who did give, those in Mississippi (a smaller number) gave more per person.

But I think this is a bad indicator also. Take last year for example. Carol and I gave away what we estimated to be about $500 worth of clothes. We got a receipt, but lost it and didn't add it to either of our returns. So if we had written off $500 that would have lowered the Massachusetts "Average Itemized Charitable Contributions" number. So if we gave money it would make Massachusetts look worse on this index.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong either on the math or the economics. Especially the economics. If you know me, you know I hate that stuff.
 
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