Does Social Capital Make You Generous?^*

Abstract

Objectives. This article tests the hypothesis that social capital—measured in terms of civic group involvement, social and racial trust, and political engagement—leads to charitable behavior by individuals. Methods. I introduce measures of the “social capital elasticity of giving,” which facilitate comparisons between the effects on charity of different social capital types. Using data from the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, I estimate these elasticities with tobit regression models. Results. I find strong links between changes in social capital stocks and changes in giving levels. Furthermore, I find that different social capital types have differing levels of impact on giving. Conclusions. Charitable giving appears to be a beneficial consequence of some types of social capital.

The Effect of Social Capital on the Choice to Use Sustainable Agricultural Practices

“…Putnam (2000) argues that civic engagement is one of the most important predictors of philanthropy. Other charitable behaviors such as volunteering time (Putnam, 2000;Ferreri-Carbonell and Gowdy, 2005) and making monetary donations (Brooks, 2005) have also been linked to social capital.…”

Religion, Income Inequality, and the Size of the Government

“…When τ * is close to 0, on the other hand, the first term is approximately equal to 1, and the second term is roughly 0 since the derivative dτ * dγ is likely to be small. 9 We summarize these findings in the following proposition.…”

“…Proof that the utility function is strictly concave in τ LetÛ (w; τ ) = (1 + γ) log(y(w; τ )) + log(τ ), where y(w; τ ) is given by equation (9). It is enough to show that d 2Û dτ 2 < 0.…”

“…Religious teaching often involves an inherent promise of reward for this type of behavior. 3 Recent empirical work by Brooks (2003Brooks ( , 2005 and Thornton and Helms (2010) have shown that religion does indeed motivate individuals to make voluntary donations, suggesting that religious individuals might derive greater enjoyment from giving as compared to secular individuals.…”

The flow of soul: a sociological study of generosity in England and Wales (2001–2011)

“…In addition, we differentiate between absolute and relative giving, both by donors and for all respondents in different social groups, such as by donors in working-class and donors in salariat positions, and for all respondents in working-class and salariat positions, that is, including non-givers. This is crucial in analysis of civic behaviour, as Schervish and Havens (1995) emphasized, although existing studies tend to focus on one or another of these aspects (Brooks, 2005;Brown and Ferris, 2007). Absolute giving refers to the amount that our respondents reported that they had given to charitable causes in the month previous to the interview, and relative giving to the amount as a fraction of their own (or if partnered, the average of the couple's) incomes.…”