After having decided to give half their considerable wealth to charity, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are now trying to convince billionaires in other countries to do the same. Their wagon will roll into China this month and most reports suggest that plutocrats in the worker’s paradise are refusing to meet the two American billionaires. Giving is the last thing on their mind.
Also See | The art of charity (graphic)
A new global poll on charity conducted by Gallup WorldView for the Charities Aid Foundation offers some insight into the level of generosity in different countries. The pollsters asked people across the world whether they undertook a charitable act in the past month, either by donating money, volunteering time or helping a stranger. Countries have then been graded according to the culture of generosity.
What is interesting is that happy nations are more likely to give than wealthy nations. So countries such as Sri Lanka, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Sierra Leone and Guyana do extremely well in the rankings despite their poverty. “It would be reasonable to conclude that giving is more an emotional act than a rational one,” says the Charities Aid Foundation in the report.
Gates and Buffett would like to know that India and China do not seem to care much for giving.
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