July 11, 2007

Volunteering

Can you guess which two cities lead the new list of top 50 metropolitan areas in terms of the highest percentage of adults volunteering for charity? And which two cities came in last? These aren't trick questions.

Stereotypes tend to be true.

See the Comments (click right below) for the answers.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

19 comments:

Steve Sailer said...

1. Minneapolis-St. Paul
2. Salt Lake City

...

49. Miami
50. Las Vegas

Not too hard, was it?

Anonymous said...

A quick look at the rankings is here on page 14 of the executive summary.

Amazingly, Detroit (34) easily beat out Los Angeles (44) and New York (48).

For all the left-wing activism in the Bay Area, you might expect San Francisco to perform better than its even-Steven 23.

Why are folks from Providence, Rhode Island so uninvolved (42)? People from Boston are hardly any more likely to volunteer than folks from Chicago.

The Northwest does pretty good: Seattle (5) and Portland (6) were both up there. I'm actually surprised to see Seattle beat out Portland. I would have figured the opposite.

Anonymous said...

Steve, as a humble Brit I'm not up to speed on where the Latinos are citywise; but several times you've referenced the very low levels of co-operativeness and civic-mindedness among the sunny South West's exciting vibrant invaders. Does this poll bear that out?

Anonymous said...

Actually, I'm surprised, because Las Vegas is a conservative libertarian city, while Minneapolis is well known for its leftist socialism. MN was the only state that voted for Walter Mondale in 1984.

Anonymous said...

Why are folks from Providence, Rhode Island so uninvolved (42)?

Rhode Island was #47 in Total Fertility Rate [live births per woman per fertile lifetime] in 2003:

#45 West Virginia 1.7985
#46 New Hampshire 1.7715
#47 Rhode Island 1.7630
#48 Maine 1.7460
#49 Massachusetts 1.7355
#50 Vermont 1.6830

And dropped to dead last in TFR in 2004:

#45 West Virginia 1.7955
#46 New Hampshire 1.7925
#47 Maine 1.7520
#48 Vermont 1.7205
#49 Massachusetts 1.7195
#50 Rhode Island 1.7110

SOURCE: nvsr54_02.pdf [Table 10, Page 45]
SOURCE: nvsr55_01.pdf [Table 11, Page 52]

And as of 2000, Rhode Island was #4 in abortion rate [abortions per 1000 women per year]:

#1 New York 31
#2 Delaware 29
#3 Florida 27
#4 Rhode Island 23
#5 Kansas 21
#6 Oregon 20

SOURCE: ss5212a1.htm#tab3 [Table 3]

In other words, Rhode Island is more or less what you might call Culture of Death Central Command.

PS: If you're a statistics junkie, then Kansas just sticks out like a sore thumb - it's got a very healthy TFR [by Western Hemisphere standards], at 2.140 [and, as Mr. Sailer points out, it's #4 overall in Caucasian TFR, at 2.06], yet it's also #5 in abortion rate.

Something weird is going on out there in the hay fields - making babies, murdering babies, making babies, murdering babies.

I suppose it might be explainable if Kansas had a very young female population, so that the statistic "abortions per 1000 women per year" [as opposed to "abortions per woman per fertile lifetime"] was not being padded by the presence of a large proportion of [infertile] older women.

But, at the same time, Florida must have a massive proportion of older, infertile women, and yet its abortion rate is just catastrophically high.

Anonymous said...

I'm suspicious. Many people volunteer and do good works through the church. Is this being ignored?

Antioco Dascalon said...

Using Arthur Brooks' "Who Really Cares" book as a guide, one would guess that the more religious (liberal or conservative) a city is, the more it would give.
Looking at the top and bottom ten, the volunteering data seems to line up pretty well. I'd think that a ranking of churchgoers per 1000 would correlate pretty well with the ranking of volunteers. Of course, Catholics are notorious for not being as involved, so it is no surprise that Miami and LV are so low. I don't think it is a matter of race so much as it is a matter of more non-Catholic Christians means more volunteers.

Anonymous said...

I'm a bit surprised by Murderopolis aka Minneapolis-St. Paul leading the list. Powerline has detailed the extensive gang problem from the decaying African-American community and the lack of policing. Of course that fair city gave us Keith X, first Muslim congressman (and Louis Farrakhan / Nation of Islam disciple).

I don't know how to account for that?

Unknown said...

LOL! I got the most charitable right. But, I guessed NYC and LA for the least charitable.

Anonymous said...

vegas' place at the bottom is rightly deserved. the only place it would make sense to volunteer is deep in henderson or summerlin.

Anonymous said...

When I did volunteer work at a women's shelter in Dallas, there were several Hispanics on staff. None were Mexican. The two I worked with most closely didn't have very high opinions of Mexicans, either.

Anonymous said...

Portland and Salt Lake City?



I hate to say it, but volunteer work could be dangerous in certain parts of our town, and Im guessing those mostly white-medium sized cities would not have too much "dangerous-looking" areas to the whites. People, as Steve has often pointed out so correctly, are more prone to "help out" others that look like them, almost assuredly out of evolutionary urges whether they realize it or not.

Anxious to see the results.

Anonymous said...

"You move it. I'm too hung over."

With this remark the Mexican male in the house tossed his car keys out to us.

"Us" as in volunteers affiliated with the Dallas chapter of Habitat for Humanity. We had been asked to finish re-siding a house in West Dallas (barrio near downtown). The Mexican male was the boyfriend of the single mother who owned the house. He had left his station wagon blocking the driveway that Saturday morning. We could not drive trucks around the back of the house to drop off construction materials. Thus the need to move his car.

All the volunteers were white.

Anonymous said...

People, as Steve has often pointed out so correctly, are more prone to "help out" others that look like them

That was Robert Putnam's conclusion, way back in 2001, which he then spent the last 6 years trying to suppress:

Bowling With Our Own

E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and
Community in the Twenty-first Century
[PDF FILE]

Anonymous said...

Actually, I'm surprised, because Las Vegas is a conservative libertarian city, while Minneapolis is well known for its leftist socialism. MN was the only state that voted for Walter Mondale in 1984. - half sigma

Yes, but Mondale's victory margin was only about 3,800 votes. 1,900 switchers and Reagan would've swept all 50 states.

Ronald Reagan was so sure of his landslide that he didn't even bother to contest the state, which demonstrates once again what a class act Reagan was.

Anonymous said...

If you're a statistics junkie, then Kansas just sticks out like a sore thumb - it's got a very healthy TFR [by Western Hemisphere standards], at 2.140 [and, as Mr. Sailer points out, it's #4 overall in Caucasian TFR, at 2.06], yet it's also #5 in abortion rate.

My World Almanac (with data from Alan Guttmacher) shows Kansas tied for 14th place in abortions in 2000.

Interesting speculation as to why, but you could also probably add: 1) large numbers of Hispanics working in Kansas in agriculture; 2) perhaps folks from surrounding states utilize abortionists in Kansas, leaving Kansas with the "credit."

An example of that phenomenon would be Wyoming. It's official rate in 2000 was 1 abortion per 1,000 women - even lower than Utah's 6.6, and much much lower than the national average of 21.4. Clearly lots of Wyoming women are traveling to other states to get abortions.

Anonymous said...

eh, do the people who wrote the report (link in Tommy's post) know what a p-value is? somehow I doubt it. Look at the scatter plots and guesstimate the p-values on the regressions. Only figure 4 (fraction of population with completed high school) might have p <0.05.


And you don't suppose there might be a decent correlation between oh, Figure 4 and things like SMSA size, pop fraction that are citizens, ...


Actually, a principal components analysis on the raw data (noisy though it doubtless is) would be quite interesting.


I tremble for my country when I realize that Ghod is a statistician.

Anonymous said...

"Something weird is going on out there in the hay fields - making babies, murdering babies, making babies, murdering babies."

People from other states go to Kansas for abortions. This may skew the numbers.

Anonymous said...

My guess is that the top cities are more rooted places, where the bottom cities are places where "everyone is from someplace else."