I was reading this New York Times article “Among the Wealthiest 1 Percent, Many Variations” the other day, and came across this sentence:
The top 1 percent of earners in a given year receives just under a fifth of the country’s pretax income, about double their share 30 years ago. They pay just over a fourth of all federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. In 2007, they accounted for about 30 percent of philanthropic giving, according to Federal Reserve data. They received 22 percent of their income from capital gains, compared with 2 percent for everybody else.
As far as I can tell, the Fed does not collect data on philanthropic giving. The Times unfortunately provides no specific source and does not give a link.
Does anyone know what data set the “30 percent” figure is from?
Mike, I would guess that it’s the IRS, as they have data on the filings of the 400 richest Americans:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/18/159261/tax-disparity-chart/?mobile=nc
The only data I could find was from the New Tithing Foundation:
http://newtithing.data360.org/
Sadly the article didn’t say why charitable giving by the wealthy so popular besides altruism. There is a large incentive for the wealthy to use charitable giving as a tax write off.
Awesome data sources–thanks!