How does diversity affect charitable giving? On the one hand, diversity can lead to increased charitable giving, as individuals may feel more connected to and invested in their community when they see the diversity of needs and perspectives within it. On the other hand, diversity can also create challenges for charitable giving, as individuals may have different priorities, beliefs, and cultural norms that affect their willingness to give to certain causes and organizations. Using data from 2010-2020 county-level income tax returns linked to the U.S. Census population estimates, I find a negative impact of local ethnic diversity on charitable giving. In particular, I document that a one percentage point increase in the local ethnic fragmentation index is associated with up to a 2.9 percent decrease in the fraction of tax returns with charitable contributions and a 2 percent decrease in charitable contributions as a fraction of adjusted gross income.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.