The data are taken from the College and Beyond survey, which covers individuals who entered college in the falls of 1951 or 1976. Higher levels of contributions are associated with higher income, whether or not the person graduated from the institution where he or she first attended college, and the degree of satisfaction with his or her undergraduate experience. Their satisfaction in turn was a function of particular aspects of that experience, including whether the person had attended a public school, whether the college had been the person's first choice, and whether there was someone who took a special interest when he or she was enrolled there. Among the more recent cohort of graduates, those who had received need-based aid tended to give less and those who were related to former alumni tended to give more, findings that may reflect the effect of otherwise unmeasured wealth. Although it may not be the most visible manifestation of wealth, charitablegiving is and has been a hallmark of affluence.
Wealthy patrons occupya prominent place in the life of the nonprofit sector.
This paper examines the charitable giving of the wealthy,noting the tax provisions affecting it and the institutional arrangementsthat have developed to foster it. The paper also presents data on the patternsand 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 ofincome contributed, and the high variability over time in giving by thewealthy. It provides evidence on the distribution of charitable bequestsby gender and the magnitude of the permanent price effect on charitablegiving implied by panel data on contributions during the 1980s. It alsosuggests that contributions as a percentage of income seems to have declinedduring the 1980s, and then recovered somewhat by 1995.