Politico:  Study: Red States More Charitable:

Red states give more money to charity than blue states, according to a new study on Monday.
The eight states with residents who gave the highest share of their income to charity supported Sen. John McCain in 2008, while the seven states with the least generous residents went for President Barack Obama, the Chronicle of Philanthropy found in its new survey of tax data from the IRS for 2008.

The eight states whose residents gave the highest share
of their income — Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, South
Carolina, Idaho, Arkansas and Georgia — all backed McCain in 2008. Utah
leads charitable giving, with 10.6% of income given.

And the least generous states — Wisconsin, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire — were Obama supporters
in the last presidential race. New Hampshire residents gave the least
share of their income, the Chronicle stated, with 2.5%.

“The reasons for the discrepancies among states, cities,
neighborhoods are rooted in part in each area’s political philosophy
about the role of government versus charity,” the study’s authors noted.

But it’s not just about politics — “religion has a big influence on giving patterns.” “Regions of the country that are deeply religious are more generous
than those that are not. Two of the top nine states—Utah and Idaho—have
high numbers of Mormon residents, who have a tradition of tithing at
least 10 percent of their income to the church,” the study states. “The
remaining states in the top nine are all in the Bible Belt.”

Boston Globe op-ed: Stingy Liberals, by Jeff Jacoby:

There are 366 major metropolitan areas in the United States, and a comprehensive new study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy ranks them on the basis of generosity —
the percentage of income the median household in each city gives to
charity. According to the Chronicle, the most generous city in America
is Provo, Utah, where residents typically give away 13.9% of
their discretionary income. Boston, by contrast, ranks No. 358: In New
England’s leading city, the median household donates just 2.9% of
its income to charity. …

Liberals, popular stereotypes notwithstanding, are not more generous and
compassionate than conservatives. To an outsider it might seem
plausible that Americans whose political rhetoric emphasizes “fairness”
and “social justice” would be more charitably inclined than those who
stress economic liberty and individual autonomy. But reams of evidence
contradict that presumption, as Syracuse University professor Arthur
Brooks demonstrated in his landmark 2006 book, Who Really Cares.

However durable the myth, wrote Brooks (who now heads the American
Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank), there is no getting
around the data. For years, academic research and national studies have
confirmed that Americans who lean to the left politically tend to be
much less charitable than those who tilt rightward. The Chronicle of
Philanthropy’s new report is only the latest in a long series of studies corroborating that fact. …

In parts of the country where conservative values dominate, charity tends to be high. Where liberalism holds sway, charity falls. “Red states are more generous than blue states,” the Chronicle concludes. The eight states that ranked the highest in charitable giving all voted for John McCain in 2008. The seven lowest-ranking states supported Barack Obama.

Of course this doesn’t mean that there aren’t generous
philanthropists in New England. It doesn’t mean selfishness is unknown
on the right. What it does mean is that where people are encouraged to
think that solving society’s ills is primarily a job for government,
charity tends to evaporate. The politics of “compassion” isn’t the same
as compassionate behavior. America’s generosity divide separates those who understand the difference from those who don’t.