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SALT LAKE CITY — A new poll ranks Utah as the most generous state in the nation.
Gallup surveyed at least 600 residents in each state, asking participants if they had donated money or volunteered time in the past month. Forty-eight percent of Utahns answered yes to both.
The survey concluded that more states were willing to donate money rather than time, and those states with higher well-being scores (according to another study) were also more likely to give generously.
“Of the most charitable states, all were above the national average for well-being; whereas only two of the least charitable states — Arizona and Nevada — were above the national average,” the poll results said.
The nature of the poll — which depended on honest responses from participants — had some questioning its validity.
“Some respondents in Gallup’s poll might not have given 100 percent squeaky-clean answers for fear of being judged uncharitable,” Mona Chalabi wrote at the Five Thirty Eight blog. “So maybe people in Utah — where 71 percent of respondents said they had given money to charity, the highest share in the U.S. — aren’t necessarily the most generous; they could just be more ashamed to answer no.”
Chalabi looked for other sources to measure generous donations by state and found a comprehensive study published in 2012 by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The data was compiled from the Internal Revenue Service, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Results of that study still put Utah in the top spot.
“As a state, Utah gave $2.4 billion in 2012; that doesn’t seem like much compared with other places (Tennessee gave $2.7 billion), but Utah’s annual donations per capita ($827) were the highest in the country,” Chalabi wrote. “Generosity in Utah is high whichever way you look at it.”
Chalabi cites the large number of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah as the reason for such a charitable population. Sure enough, the percent given, according to the philanthropy study, was 10.6 percent.
