Women Who Are Young, Single, and Not Religious Are Especially Generous

Young, single women with no religious affiliation were found to be more generous than expected in the newly published Women Give 2014, the latest in a series of research studies about women in philanthropy.

The study surveyed annual giving, and the gift amounts in the study were quite small, with the median annual gift total of single people in the study under $250.

Women Give 2014: Women, Religion, and Giving is the fifth in a series of studies by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute of Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. It analyzes a 2013 study that interviewed about 2,000 non-Jewish Americans about their giving in 2012. (Jewish Americans were studied separately.)

The study listed the following results, finding that single women under 45 years of age with no religious affiliation:

• Give two-and-a-half times more money to charity than middle aged and older single women who are religiously unaffiliated.
• Give twice as much as young, single women who are religiously affiliated but attend services infrequently.
• Give twice as much as their unaffiliated male peers.
• Give twice as much to non-religiously identified organizations as they do to religiously identified organizations.

Those who are religious and attend services frequently—at least once a month—were found to give the most overall to charity.

The study authors found the results to be “an important shift from the standard religiosity-giving story found in most previous research.”

“The religiosity-giving relationship, which has been assumed to be the same regardless of gender and age, is a more complex relationship than previously thought,” say the study authors. “Conventional wisdom says younger generations—Millennials and Gen Xers—are less generous than their predecessors. And previous research has found that people who are affiliated with a particular religion and who attend services regularly are more likely to give, and to give more, to both religious and non-religious charities than people who do not have a religious affiliation.

“Those who have been concerned that the falling rate of religious affiliation would have an adverse effect on charitable giving outside of congregations can take heart from these findings.”

The full report can be downloaded for free at http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/research-by-category/women-give-2014