Sri Lanka among most charitable

Sri Lanka has been ranked eighth among countries who are more prone to charity, a global study has revealed.

The World Giving Index, the largest study ever carried out into charitable behaviour across the globe, which ranked Sri Lanka the eighth most charitable nation, has found that happier people are more likely to give money to charity than those who are wealthy.

The World Giving Index used a Gallup survey on the charitable behaviour of people in 153 countries representing 95 percent of the world’s population. The survey asked people whether they had given money to charity in the last month and to rank how happy they are with life on a scale of one to ten.

For all countries CAF compared the strength of the relationship between giving with both a nation’s GDP and the happiness of its population. CAF found that the link between happiness and giving is stronger than the link between wealth and giving.

The study also measured two other types of charitable behaviour alongside giving money - volunteering time and helping a stranger. The “World Giving Index” combines the levels of each charitable behaviour to produce a ranking of the most charitable nations in the world.

Sri Lanka came eighth on the World Giving Index with 56 percent of the population having donated to charity. Sri Lanka’s happiness score was 4.2

CAF Director of Research Richard Harrison said: “We have always thought of ourselves as a charitable nation and now for the first time we can see how charitable we are compared to the rest of the world.

“Donating money to charity is something that is traditionally seen as being driven by how wealthy a person is. However, it is clear that happiness plays an important role in influencing whether people give.

“The findings suggest a positive cycle where one person gives to charity, the charity improves the happiness of the individuals they support and they in turn are more likely to give.”

Australia and New Zealand topped the “World Giving Index”. Malta was found to be the country with the largest percentage of the population (83 percent) giving money, the people of Turkmenistan are the most generous with their time with 61 percent having given time to charity and Liberia was top of the list for helping a stranger (76 percent).