America's poor are its most generous donors

The poor share a greater percentage of their income with others than the rich do. Maybe that's because they tend to be more religious and empathetic, and are more likely to rub shoulders with others in need.

When Jody Richards saw a homeless man begging outside a downtown McDonald's recently, he bought the man a cheeseburger. There's nothing unusual about that, except that Richards is homeless, too, and the 99-cent cheeseburger was an outsize chunk of the $9.50 he'd earned that day panhandling.

The generosity of poor people isn't so much rare as rarely noticed, however. Full Story »

Posted by Dwight Rousu

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Dwight Rousu
4.4
by Dwight Rousu - May. 26, 2009

This is an interesting and well researched story of social values across the income spectrum, using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It combines statistics and anecdotal stories. Informative . I would have liked a link to the data itself. (The BLS says they track neither poverty or income.) The submitted reader comments are interesting, indicating disbelief and dissing the poor as leeches on society. Perhaps many of the rich are the leeches.

Is it time for those earning more than $20K per year to start tithing, ... to NewsTrust? ;-)

What makes poor people’s generosity even more impressive is that their giving generally isn’t tax deductible, because they don’t earn enough to itemize their charitable tax deductions.

And sales taxes are a bigger percentage of income for the poor.

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