New England states make more, give less, annual survey of charitable giving finds

Duluth News Tribune ^ | 11/10/04 | LAURA WALSH

[njwoman]

"So this article is based on a false premise?"

The premise of "New England states make more" is correct, however, what was not accounted in the average gross income in generosity index is the cost of living. The definition in the technical notes states:

Average Adjusted Gross Income (AAGI): The average adjusted gross income of all taxpayers for a particular state.

It is not clear what the adjustment refers to, but most likely it is adjusted for inflation instead of cost of living. If the average incomes were adjusted for cost of living, I believe the gap between the New England states and not New England states would decrease significantly. Here is the site that attempts to do this kind of adjustments:

http://www.coli.org/

In their press release, adjustment in average income of Morris county, NJ resulted in the average adjusted income of $60K from over $80K.

http://www.coli.org/pdf/prhhincomeadjustedcoli.pdf