Posted on 11/20/2020 7:03:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A new study from WalletHub shows that Utah, one of the most religious states in the nation, is the most charitable state in the U.S., with residents there giving the highest share of their income to charity.
The personal finance website released its list of the “Most Charitable States for 2021” on Monday.
Overall, Utah was ranked as the most charitable state in the U.S. as it was the state with the highest share of its population that donated money and also was tied with Minnesota for the highest volunteer rate.
Utah was also identified as the state where residents donated the highest share of their income to charity.
Utah’s ranking on the top of the list comes as Gallup data from 2015 found that the Beehive State has the highest rate of religious attendance in the country, with 51% of residents attending church services at least once a week.
Arkansas and Georgia, two other states where residents donated a higher share of their income to charity, also had higher than average religious attendance rates, 45% and 39%, respectively.
On the other hand, most of the states with the lowest percentage of donated income have much lower rates of weekly religious attendance.
Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine and Alaska, which took four of the bottom five spots, all have weekly church attendance rates lower than 30%, according to the Gallup study.
Of the 50 states, West Virginia residents gave the lowest share of their income to charity. While 34% of West Virginians attend church weekly, the state has one of the lowest median household incomes in the country, according to the World Population Review.
Share of donated income to charity was just one of many factors that the WalletHub study looked at when ranking the most and least charitable states.
Other variables analyzed included volunteer rates, volunteer hours per capita, the share of the population who donated time, the share of the population that collected and distributed food and the number of charities per capita.
Taking these factors into account, Minnesota, Maryland, Oregon and Ohio rounded out the top five most charitable states.
Arizona was ranked as the least charitable state, with New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi and Rhode Island joining the Grand Canyon State in the bottom five.
With the exception of Arizona and Rhode Island, the least charitable states had among the lowest median household incomes in the country.
While residents of Utah and other more religious states gave the highest amount of their income to charity, the WalletHub study found that states Gallup deemed to have less religious attendance had a much higher share of charities per capita.
Vermont, where just 17% of residents attend church weekly, had the highest number of charities per capita, followed by Montana, Alaska, Massachusetts and Maine. None of those states had weekly church attendance rates higher than 27%, according to Gallup.
On the other hand, most of the states that had the fewest number of charities per capita had high church attendance rates.
Utah had the second-fewest number of charities per capita while the states of Mississippi and Texas were also in the bottom five. Nevada, where 27% of residents attend church weekly, had the fewest number of charities per capita.
Earlier studies have found a correlation between charitable giving and religiosity.
Last year, a report released by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and Vanguard Charitable found a relationship between the decline of religious attendance in the U.S. and a drop-off in charitable giving, The author of that report noted that "attending services is correlated with giving to religious organizations" but "also correlated with giving to secular groups."
Over the years, reports from the Chronicle of Philanthropy have also noted a link between charitable giving and religious faith. Reports published in 2012 and 2014 found that the most religious states had the highest rates of charitable giving.
Wonderful for Utah! Now please be charitable and take Romney back!!!
Okay, I’ll go here. Lots of churches do lots of good things. But they are also social clubs for a lot of communities that would be taxed where they not under religious cover. Tithing to the Mormon church is not necessarily predominantly “charitable”.
Cult!
In before the ususal @ssholes.
Great.
Note that members of mormonism fill out a report each year to determine their worthiness.
Don’t meet the criteria, no temple recommend. No temple recommend, no eternity in the presence of God, no future godhood for themselves...
I was gonna say that Utah can’t be the most charitable since they voted Romney in. No charity there at all!!
Good point. If they are counting donations to your church as a charitable contribution, then that could change things. The reason I think that, is because I’ve been involved with a few local small churches. And in those churches, the vast majority of member donations went to pay the pastor’s salary, and upkeep of the church itself. Very little got spent on what we might think of as charity work.
Then again, I know someone could mention charities, in which the bulk of the expenditures of the charity are for salaries and upkeep of the organization, as opposed to being spent to deliver charitable aid to people. But perhaps that’s a subject for a separate thread.
Wow! Good point
Yes. My father used to curse that people deserve the kind of politicians they vote for. Utah gets Romney. So they must deserve him. So be it. But the problem is that his big idiot mouth and his voting in the US senate curses the all the rest of Americans, too.
Yep—all that is often the case.
Personally, I would tax all organizations alike.
I wonder if Romney was the beneficiary of some crooked Dominion ballot counting. Hence, all his protesting DJT at every turn.
I'd take my vote back from 2012 if I could.
When I lived in that area, Mormons were REQUIRED to give 10% of their income to the Mormon Church. To be in good standing(Temple Worthy) you had to bring in your tax forms as proof.
Required giving is not volunteer giving.
I call BS. Mississippi has historically been one of the most charitable states and now is in the bottom five?
This reminds me of an old joke in Mark Twain’s Library of Wit and Humor about a black man who no longer went to church.
Whey asked why he no longer went to the African Episcopal Methodist Church he said...
“I and my family went there, and I gave lots of money to the church, and the members called me ‘Brother Brown’”.
“Then my wife got sick and I had to give less as the medicine cost so much, and the members called me ‘Mister Brown’”.
“Then my wife died, and my children got sick so I could not give any money to the church. The members then said ‘There’s that old N——a Brown!” so I quit them”
Hey if you don’t like it take it up with Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Utah is the closest red state to me unless Arizona is still considered red. Nonetheless, I would never live anywhere in Utah—and that’s not because of the cold weather or the lack of Italian restaurants.
So, according to you, voluntarily giving to a church is not “charity”?
Our options were Romney and Obama. Either way we lost.
AMPU, it’s sad to see you’re still a bigot until now against us Latter-day Saints.
As a Latter-day Saint, I voluntarily give 10% of my income to my church because I believe what God commanded in Malachi 3:8-11. And yes, during our annual tithing settlement with our pastor (bishop), we are asked whether we’re full tithe payers. If not, then we cannot get a temple recommend.
However, you are wrong in claiming not having a temple recommend means we cannot be in the presence of God or we cannot get exalted as the glorified Children of God.
We do CHARITY work for the dead in the temple in all visits after the first one. Only the first time we go do the ordinances apply to us. Only those ordinances matter to us. All subsequent visits are to help those who cannot help themselves in fulfilling Christ’s condition that only those who are born of water and of the spirit may enter the kingdom of God.
So, a Latter-day Saint only needs to go to the temple once to qualify for exaltation and never set foot in the temple for the rest of his life. However, that raises another issue of whether that person developed the traits Christ expects of his true followers - the character of being charitable - and its greatest expression is when someone helps those who cannot help themselves.
Get your facts right before misrepresenting my church. It’s unbecoming.
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