I’m curious what our resident philanthopy expert thinks about Margaret Wente’s column in today’s Globe. It looks like classic Wente… broad brushstrokes, full of cliched overgeneralizations, but (also classic Wente) she may have half a point (or not). She’s picking up on U.S. research by Arthur Brooks to the effect that charitable contribution rates are highly positively correlated with the Red State profile (traditional, religious, more conservative than liberal, etc.). The claim that I find interesting is that you get higher levels of charitable contribution from this group even if you leave out contributions to religious organizations.

Here’s the website for Brooks’s book.