I read an article a few days back. It was about giving and why it's important. The article piqued my interest. We all know that giving makes us feel good. What's different with this article is that the economist, Arthur C. Brooks, quantified how giving benefits us financially. Here's an excerpt from the piece:
"Say you have two identical families—same religion, same race, same number of kids, same town, same level of education—everything’s the same, except that one family gives $100 more to charity than the second family. Then the giving family will earn on average $375 more in income than the non-giving family—and that’s statistically attributable to the gift.
... I ran the numbers again and looked at volunteering. I found the same thing: People who volunteer do better financially. I ran the numbers on blood donations. Think about that—giving blood. You’re not going to get richer if you give blood, are you? Well, yes, you are.
... If we were to increase our private charitable donations by just 1 percent, which is about $2 billion a year, that would translate into a gross domestic product of about 39 billion new dollars."
How's that for an economic stimulus?
It's always interesting to find that a researcher has proved something I already knew was good. Take a look at the full article, Why Giving Matters. It's worth the read.
image from Shel Silverstein's, The Giving Tree
2 comments:
way cool... thanks for posting it. i like getting my news from your blog, jo's blog and eped... oh and janice too. :)
this is amazing. I, like you, really enjoy learning about data backing up my beliefs. I'm so glad you shared it with us.
And I love the giving tree too. I have Mom's copy.
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