The Correlates Of Public Giving

9 Pages 2326 Words

les affect charitable behavior and the true relationship between municipal size and public giving.


SETTING:

This study will examine the relationship between town size and public giving in 33 Vermont towns. Public giving, for the purpose of this study, is defined as the amount of money given to out-of-town organizations. This money is allocated through the town budget and approved by the voters at Town Meeting. The size of these towns ranges from 268 eligible voters to 5,024 eligible voters. The towns were selected from all areas of the state, as to eliminate possible confounding and to better grasp the differences that might exist throughout the state of Vermont.


HYPOTHESIS:

The relationship between town size and giving seems simple. The larger the town, the more they potentially have to give. However, I expect to find that smaller towns have a greater sense of community, more awareness of their neighbors, and therefore more tendencies to give public money to organizations that benefit their fellow citizens. The study performed by the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy found that while the frequency of donations made by citizens in small/rural towns was greater than that of citizens in larger municipalities, the amounts given, in dollar amounts, were actually smaller.
To delve deeper into this finding, I will examine giving as a percentage of the total town budget, excluding any school budgets. The main variables in this study will include town size and amount of money given, with controls for median family income and tax rate. This variables and controls will be fully defined in the operational definition section of this study. Based on the controls, I expect that towns with a higher median family income will give more as a percentage of their total budget, while towns with a higher tax rate will accordingly donate less public money to charitable causes.
At the end of the day, this study will most li...