Are we a giving country? Report finds Pak, Sri Lanka way more generous than India

While India is second to only China in terms of the highest percentage of people helping strangers, it fails to feature on the top 20 list of the world’s most generous nations, which is dominated by Mynamar, shows the latest World Giving Index report.

According to the annual report released by the Charities Aid Foundation, India mas the maximum number of people donating money and spending volunteering time with charities, while it comes in second in helping a stranger. China tops the list for the highest number of people helping strangers due to its large population. Almost 409 million people had helped a stranger in China in the previous month.

The World Giving Index looks at charitable behaviour across the world and is based on an average of three measures of giving behaviour - the percentage of people who in a typical month donate money to charity, volunteer their time, and help a stranger and the e measurement for donating money is based on the number of people who give money rather than the actual dollar amount..

“The report is based on more than a million interviews conducted by Gallup since 2005/06, as part of their World Poll survey,” it explains. Over 135 countries were survey part of the exercise.

India came 69th in the overall rankings, with US and Myanmar firmly tied for the first place, followed by Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand. Yemen was bottom with Venezuela just above.

The next five most generous countries were Australia, Malaysia and the UK (in joint seventh), Sri Lanka and Trinidad and Tobago respectively. Infact even Pakistan( rank 61)  has a higher ranking than India when it comes to generosity.

Burma shares the top spot because an extraordinarily high (91 percent) percentage of its respondents said they gave money to charity.

“…Myanmar’s position is driven primarily by an incredibly high proportion of people donating money (91%). This reflects the strong Theravada Buddhist community within Myanmar, with its estimated 500,000 monks highest proportion of monks to population of any Buddhist country,” the report explains. And  Sri Lanka, which has a similar population, ranked No. 9 on the overall list for the same reason.

What this means is that existing wealth is no guarantee of higher levels of giving money.

This fact is further  demonstrated by BRIC  (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries.Despite their expanding economies, only China has seen an increase  in donating money to charity since last year, up from 10% to 13% (although all four countries have seen an increase in volunteering scores this year).Similarly, there is little consistency across another recognised  group of emerging economies, MINT,16 with Indonesia the only one to have seen an increase in the  proportion of its people donating money, the report said.

And while India may top the list of number of people donating money to charity due to its large population, it does not even feature on the donation list when measured as a percentage of population.

“Despite having smaller adult populations than China, both India and the United States have more individuals donating money to charity. The United States has just over a fifth of the total adult population of China (257 million vs. 1,135 million respectively)18, and yet the much higher proportion of Americans donating money (68% vs. 13% in China) results in a difference of approximately 27 million people,” the report said.

Similarly, India has the most people volunteering their time, with an estimated 186.5 million doing so, (China only achieves fourth place on this list, even being surpassed by Indonesia despite having over six times as many citizens), its ranking in terms of the proportion of people volunteering is as low as 60.

Moreover,  around the world, fewer people aged 15 to 29 are donating, possibly due to high youth unemployment which continues to afflict the global economy.

Globally, the number of people who helped a stranger in 2013 has risen by 226 million year on year and 132 million more people are volunteering.

The proportion of people giving money to charity has fallen slightly – by 0.6 percentage points and seems to reflect the slight fall in the global GDP growth rate reported between 2012 and 2013.