Charity May Depend More on Happiness than Wealth

From Need Magazine

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Now for the news: Clayton Jones of The Christian Science Monitor reports that a country's average level of charity depends more on its happiness than on its wealth. This information comes from a Gallup survey called "The World Giving Index 2010". The survey asked the following questions in 153 countries:

Which of the following three charitable acts have you undertaken in the past month:

1. Donated money to an organization?

2. Volunteered time to an organization?

3. Helped a stranger, or someone you didn’t know who needed help?

Gallup then compared the answers to indexes of wealth and happiness. Assuming people answered honestly (usually when huge numbers of people are surveyed, honest people outweigh the fibbers), a surprising number of economically poor countries are generous. Sierra Leone, for instance, ranks as the ninth most generous country in the world, even though it is the third lowest country on the Human Development Index.

So if you follow positive psychology tips to become happier, you may become more generous, and becoming more generous may make you happier, and so on! It's win-win!