Wealthy Americans giving less to charity, non-wealthy giving more

[Indy Texas]

I guess this is what happens when we view all non-profit organizations as "charities."

People generally use the term to refer to some sort of social service directed at the poor.

In practice, people are influenced by their own surroundings and assumptions, hence most people's charitable giving goes to the church they go to, the university they went to and perhaps some fine art/cultural organization they enjoy like a museum. Lower-income people have to see and deal with the consequences of unaddressed poverty personally, so they are more aware of it and hence more likely to steer their money towards feeding, clothing and housing the poor.

People can do as they please with their own money. But in practice, people don't efficiently allocate private resources to addressing public problems. They'd rather buy pretty pink ribbons for breast cancer than buy Product(RED) merchandise for AIDS, even though the latter is a far more pressing public health concern that less medical progress has been made on. They'd rather donate clothing and canned goods to Haitian disaster victims because sorting through the clothes and cans is a fun community activity, even though just giving the Haitians money would be far more helpful and efficient.

This is why the standard GOP argument that private charity will fill in the gap if government-funded social services are scaled back is total crock.