Lifestyle

How Charitable is Texas?

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Tony Maples Photography

 

According to the World Giving Index, The United States is one of the most generous nations in the world, coming in at #2 overall out of the 140 countries polled. But how do individual states stack up?

A recent study conducted by Wallet Hub compared all 50 states to determine who was the most charitable and who was the least. Data was gathered across 13 domains including Volunteer Rate, Volunteer Hours per Capita, Donors of Time, Donors of Money, and Number of Food Banks per Capita. Here are some of the main findings and we will see how Texas stacked up.

Show me the money$

Photo: Flickr/Julian Partridge

Utah holds the #1 spot overall as the most charitable state. It was ranked #1 in both key categories of Volunteering Service and Charitable Giving. Minnesota came in at #2, ranking high in those two categories as well. To round out the top five are North Dakota-#3, Maryland-#4, and Oklahoma-#5.

Texas received a rather dismal ranking at #48, making it the 3rd least charitable state. Texas was ranked next-to-last (#49) in the Charitable Giving field. Only California (#49) and Arizona (#50) received poorer rankings in regards to giving.

In breaking down the volunteer rate, as stated earlier, Utah received the #1 ranking with Florida being ranked the lowest. Mississippi and New York were right behind Florida with the lowest volunteer rate, whereas South Dakota and Minnesota were #2 and #3 respectively in terms of the volunteer rate.

Time to volunteer!
Photo: Flickr/Mount Rainier National Park

While traditional wisdom would usually tell us that the states with more money are more charitable, the study actually found otherwise. One interesting statistic was how the states stacked up in terms of their overall GDP. Most states fell into one of three categories:

  1. Poorest and Most Charitable
  2. Mixed
  3. Richest and Least Charitable.

Interestingly, Texas and New York were ranked in the Richest and Least category, with West Virginia and Oklahoma rounding out the Poorest and Most category. In the mixed category were Maryland, Connecticut, and Arkansas.

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