If the Bidens (I assume this is a joint tax return?) really did give that little then I do find it sad. Same for Cheney and Reagan.
Regarding the actual IRS statistics, though I'm confused. I assume these statistics are based on actual tax returns--but how can they be accurate when so many people in the lower incomes just take the standard deduction? GF and I have never itemized deductions so we've never given the IRS any information about how much we give to charity. I don't think my parents (in their 50s--making in the $45-60,000 range most years) do so either; or at least, I don't think they deduct charitable giving--I've never seen them keep track of any charitable giving that they do, but I guess they could just completely fudge the number and hope not to get audited.
What gives me pause is that I find it *extremely* hard to believe that people are making in the $15,000 to 30,000 range are on average giving away almost $2000 a year to charity. How can someone who makes in the $15-20,000 afford to give away such a significant chunk of their income? This is the range that most PhD students I know are getting paid per year and many of them are taking out loans in order to live when they are closer to the $15,000 mark.
And since people in the $15-20,000 range are likely giving much less than $2000, that means people nearer to the $30,000 range are giving much more than $2000 in order to make the average be around $2000. I also have trouble believing that people in the $30,000 income range are routinely giving something like $4000 a year to charity.
In fact, I'm finding numbers that look nothing like those IRS figures:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/79972108.html
Lower-income households appear to contribute smaller average percentages of their income to charity and are less likely to donate. Among the group of households that contribute to charities, however, households with income under $25,000 contribute a larger percentage of their income (about 1.5 percent of income) than do households with incomes between $25,000 and $50,000 (2) (see Figure 2). Above that level, average charitable contributions as a percent of income tend to increase, reaching a peak of about 3 percent of income for households with incomes above $400,000.
So households making 25,000 give an average of $375.
Households making over $400,000 give an average of $12,000 a year.
This site says 3.1% is the average across all Americans:
http://www.justgive.org/html/don_info/howmuch.html.
According to this site
# Average Annual Giving: On average, wealthy Americans (annual income of $150,000 or more) give away 1.9 percent of their annual income.49
# Under $300,000: American families making under $300,000 a year give away roughly 2.3 percent of their incomes.50
# Over $300,000: American families making over $300,000 a year give away roughly 4.4 percent of their incomes.50
http://www.generousgiving.org/page.asp?sec=4&page=161
These numbers seem much more reasonable--what's going on?
