Money and Religion

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Jun 10 14:30:01 PDT 1998


At 01:16 PM 6/10/98 -0600, you wrote:
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> Also, while Americans fiercely object to
>> taxation, private giving to religious organizations has been going up, I
>> think.
>>
>
>The last time I checked, religious giving was actually on a decline.

Tru, but not so much as contributions to other areas. Between 1993 and 1995, contributions to religion remained unchanged (in constant dollars), decilined by 16.7% for education, 31.6% for public social benefit organizations, whilie rising for arts and culture (by 42%), environment (12.5%), health (34.5%), human services (13,2%) and youth development (31%).

The 1987-1995 trends are: religion -17.1%, Arts & Culture -29%, Environment -0.6%, Education +10.1%, Health +39.4%, human services +1.3% - again in constant $$.

On the other hand, religion is the single largest destination of religious giving - nearly 60% of household reported giving to religion in 1995; the next largest item is human services - only about 9% (sic! or rather sick!) households reported giving to that field. Source: Independent Sector, _Giving and Volunteering in the United States_ (1996).

Regards, WS



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list