This paper explores cross-country variations in charitable giving and investigates the association of welfare state policies with private philanthropy. Hypotheses are drawn from crowding-out theory and considerations about the influence of a country's mixed economy of welfare. We add to the on-going discussion concerning the crowding-out hypothesis with empirical evidence by looking at specific charitable subsectors people donate to across countries. Using Eurobarometer survey data that include 23 countries, we find no evidence for a crowding-out effect, but rather a crosswise crowding-in effect of private donations. Moreover, giving behaviour differs between non-profit regimes.Résumé Cet article explore les écarts qui existent, d'un pays à l'autre, entre les dons de charité et enquête sur l'association des politiques d'É tat relatives à l'assistance sociale à la philanthropie privée. Les hypothèses reposent sur la théorie d'éviction et des considérations portant sur l'influence d'une économie mixte d'un pays en matière d'assistance sociale. À la discussion courante sur l'hypothèse d'éviction, nous avons intégré des évidences empiriques en examinant des soussecteurs de bienfaisance précis auxquels les populations de divers pays contribuent. En utilisant les données du sondage Eurobaromètre portant sur 23 pays, nous Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
Previous research addressing the relation between income and donations as a proportion of income has revealed predominantly inconsistent results. In this article, we argue that this can partly be explained by the great variance of methodological approaches. Providing a literature review covering 26 studies, we systematically identify how methodological issues such as data, variables, and methods have affected former findings. In addition, we apply different methodological approaches to Austrian income tax data ( n = 20,000), demonstrating how different methods lead to a variation in results. Overall, we show that existing studies are hardly comparable as their designs vary strongly. We point out that it is particularly important to use samples with sufficient cases of all income groups and methods that adequately account for the non-linear relation between the two variables, not restricting it to a U-shape. Our findings enable a better understanding and interpretation of diverging findings in philanthropic research.
How did the relation between Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and government develop during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, once governments had taken restrictive measures to lock down economic and public life? Austria is used as an example of a corporatist welfare state whereby collaboration between government and CSOs occurs particularly in the fields of social services, health-care, and youth. Our analysis focuses on the social service sector and differentiates between several social policy fields. We hereby analyze data from qualitative interviews with CEOs from 30 CSOs, four group discussions with another 30 representatives of CSOs, public agencies and authorities, and from a standardized questionnaire (n = 99 CSOs). We also utilize our own experiences as participant observers in meetings between CSOs and government. Results indicate that CSOs suffered financially partly due to a decrease in income, though mostly due to an increase in cost. In social services in particular, they also faced hardships caused by the need to reorganize operations and human resources, and by the increased demands of customers. Federal government took responsibility for supporting CSOs financially, though such support was hampered by unclear competencies in Austria’s multilayered federal system.
Interestingly, although many authors consent that nonprofit organizations and the nonprofit sector have grown in many countries, there is little discussion of how to best measure this growth. Looking at the broad universe of nonprofit organizations, there is no single measure that is relevant for the whole sector and captures changes adequately. This article gives an overview of commonly-used growth measures in the existing nonprofit literature and discusses the informative value of the various measures. Using Austrian and Scottish time-series data, we present an empirical example of how the growth story of the nonprofit sector can change depending on the measures used. The correlations between measures such as the number of organizations, income/expenditures, and assets are particularly small. We recommend that researchers measuring the growth of the nonprofit sector should be clear about the properties of their selected measure, and where possible should present alternative measures in their analysis.
Equal access to childcare services is a key concern of childcare policy. This article analyses social inequalities in the availability of such services. We explore how observed disparities are related to the socio-economic status of neighbourhoods and investigate how different provider types contribute to such differences. To do so, we use data on all childcare centres in the city of Vienna, Austria, on the spatial distribution of children aged under six and on three measures of neighbourhood status, over a period of eight years. We find that spatial accessibility is highest in neighbourhoods with the highest socio-economic status, that such inequality has increased over time and that both effects can be attributed to the role of non-profits. The results indicate that the policy change undertaken in Vienna towards increased communitarisation – that is, a shift towards non-profit provision – has undermined the universal character of the city’s childcare system.
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