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| Publications [#13165] of Charles T. Clotfelter
Chapters in Books
- Auten, Gerald E., Charles T. Clotfelter, and Richard L. Schmalbeck, Taxes and Philanthropy Among the Wealthy,
in Does Atlas Shrug? The Economic Consequences of Taxing the Rich, edited by Joel Slemrod
(2000),
pp. 392-424, New York: Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press
(last updated on 2006/12/04)
Abstract:
Although it may not be the most visible manifestation of wealth, charitable giving is and has been a hallmark of affluence. Wealthy patrons occupy a prominent place in the life of the nonprofit sector. Those occupying the top rungs of the income and wealth distributions make a disproportionate share of all charitable gifts: the one percent of American households with the highest incomes made more than 16 percent of all contributions in 1994,and the wealthiest 1.4 percent of decedents gave some 86 percent of all charitable bequests. This paper examines the charitable giving of the wealthy,noting the tax provisions affecting it and the institutional arrangements that have developed to foster it. The paper also presents data on the patterns and trends in contributions by the wealthy, both by living donors and through charitable bequests. The paper reveals the importance of gifts to higher education among the largest donors, the great variation in percentage of income contributed, and the high variability over time in giving by the wealthy. It provides evidence on the distribution of charitable bequests by gender and the magnitude of the permanent price effect on charitable giving implied by panel data on contributions during the 1980s. It also suggests that contributions as a percentage of income seems to have declined during the 1980s, and then recovered somewhat by 1995.
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