The Orange County Register

If you are down on your luck and in need of a helping hand, you can take heart that your fellow Americans are the most generous in the world, according to “The Almanac of American Philanthropy,” published by the Philanthropy Roundtable. In fact, not only does the U.S. donate the highest percentage of its GDP in the world, Americans’ voluntary donation rate is twice as high as that in Britain and Canada, and nearly 20 times as high as the rate in Germany and Italy.

Shattering myths about the stinginess of the wealthy and liberals’ monopoly on compassion, the almanac also revealed that the top 1 percent of income earners (with annual household income of at least $394,000) account for about one-third of all charitable giving, and that even though conservative households earned 6 percent less income than liberal households, they gave 30 percent more to charity.

In a 2015 national poll commissioned by the Roundtable, when asked if their first choice for solving a social problem would be to use government or use philanthropic aid, 47 percent of Americans chose private charity, compared to 32 percent for government.

Even some of those who prefer government action recognize that it is less efficient at addressing social problems, as reflected by the 59 percent who said private charities are most cost-effective, versus just 20 percent who said government is.

Americans’ generosity has persisted despite government’s exponential growth. Just imagine how much more generous Americans would be if governments did not waste so much of their money.