John J. Havens

The Boston Area Diary Study and the Moral Citizenship of Care

This paper describes the theoretical foundations, empirical findings, and practical and philosophical implications of the Boston Area Diary Study (BADS), a study of the caring behavior of 44 participants over one calendar year. In particular, the paper presents an identification theory of care and discusses how it shaped the conceptualization, collection, and analysis of the data in a year-long diary study of daily voluntary assistance. The findings from the BADS (1) theoretically confirm the identification theory of care; (2) methodologically capture how individuals perceive and carry out caring behavior as a unity; and (3rpar; empirically document the existence of a moral citizenship in America that is substantially more vigorous than is implied by the usual indicators of civic and political citizenship.

Wealth and the Commonwealth: New Findings on Wherewithal and Philanthropy

Drawing in large part on the 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances, the authors describe the pattern of charitable giving by families at the upper reaches of income and wealth, as well as across the income spectrum. The overriding empirical motif is that the distribution of charitable giving is more highly skewed toward the upper end of the financial spectrum than previously documented, and that there appears to be a trend toward becoming evenmoreso.The over riding theoretical motifis that income and wealth are so thoroughly imbricated, especially at the upper end of the financial spectrum, that the analyses of the determinants of charitable giving need to shift from their current focus on the dynamics of income to a complementary focus on the dynamics of wealth.

Do the Poor Pay More: Is the U-Shaped Curve Correct?

We first show where the U-shaped curve of the relationship between income and charitable giving, which is often construed as evidence that the poor pay more than do the wealthy, comes from. We then recalculate the relationship between income and giving, showing why the data do not support the contention that the poor contribute a greater percentage of their income to philanthropy.

The Methods and Metrics of the Boston Area Diary Study

The authors discuss the conceptual framework, methods, and findings of the Boston Area Diary Study (BADS) to provide insights into the problems and prospects of survey research on philanthropy. First, the conceptual foundations and the operationalization of the variables are discussed. Next, the research design and methodology are described, and the findings are briefly summarized. Next, two validity measures are presented: a comparison of the BADS results with those subsequently obtained by The Gallup Organization from interviews with the same participants and a study of possible Hawthorne effects produced by repeated interviewing. Next, some specific recommendations are made for the operationalization and measurement of giving and volunteering and for improvements to field procedures. In the conclusion, the authors reflect on the implications of careful research methodology for an adequate assessment of the range and level of care in society.

Explaining the curve in the U-shaped curve

In a previous paper we have demonstrated that for the total population of households, including non-givers, lower income households participate less and donate smaller average percentages of their household incomes than do higher income households. In this paper we inquire about the relative generosity of that sub-population of households that actually donate to charitable causes. We base our analysis on data collected in the 1990 national survey of Giving and Volunteering in the United States conducted by the Gallup Organization for Independent Sector. In the first section we review the factors that differentiate the upward sloping curve describing the population of all households and the U-shaped curve describing the sub-population of contributing households. In the second section we demonstrate that a substantial proportion of the curvature in the U-shaped relationship operates through giving to religion. In the third section we show that giving by the 7 per cent of high givers increases the curvature while the giving by the 93 per cent of normal givers attenuates the curvature. In the fourth section we combine the previous two analyses by looking at the patterns of religious and non-religious giving for both normal and high givers. We conclude that income is not a reliable indicator of who is generous or selfish in regard to philanthropic giving.