Which side is more charitable?

The Arthur Brooks of AEI has a book called Who Really Cares, here’s Ezra Klein summing up the results:

[It] cites data showing that "households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals." Every so often, his findings are trumpeted as proof that conservatives are more genuinely compassionate than liberals. And that's exactly what Nick Kristof did over the weekend.

But the difference can be explained in one word, and it's not "compassion." It's "religion." A recent survey from Google similarly found that self-identified conservatives gave more to charity than did self-identified liberals. But they also found that "if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do."

If liberals give only slightly more after religious organizations are excluded, then I’m guessing liberals are giving less over all even after you account for the fact that a good percentage of religious donations essentially go to member services.  Ezra talks a bit about what really counts as charity, there’s a good argument that we’re overvaluing donations to the Ivies and that sort of thing.  They aren’t adding that many more students so better Ivies are not going to help the poor that much even if they do a good job of expanding need-based aid.

Anyhow, I think Ezra gets it wrong when he queries what really counts.  I think it is fair to exclude funding spent on overhead, fund-raising, and member services.  However beyond that we’re best off categorizing into the type of benefit provided rather than arguing what counts.

Beyond that, I think there’s a few ways to consider this:

1. Getting averaging the percentage given by household rather than dividing the amount given by the number of households.  Doing it the latter way emphasizes how much the rich give.
2. Beyond that, apply the Widow’s Mite principle.  Giving out of scarce funds counts more than giving of abundance.  Breaking down to compare similar income quartiles or perhaps by how household income compares to the poverty rate.
3. Include state and local taxes that get spend towards charitable ends.  We vote both with our ballots and our feet, choosing to live in a higher tax but better service providing community is a charitable choice.

Kristof does note that apparently conservatives give more blood, which is about as equitable of a measure as there is out there.  So I’m guessing that liberals won’t necessarily out perform conservatives even under some of these criteria.