Philanthropy in Israel: An Updated Picture

In the last few decades, philanthropy in Israeli society has changed and along with the traditional charitable giving, a new kind of modern philanthropy has emerged. This empirical study aims to profile modern Israeli philanthropists, and to present the characteristics that are linked to donation amounts, donor generosity, and the link between donor characteristics and the likelihood to donate. The study results show differences in Israeli philanthropic behavior that are linked to a variety of economic and socio-demographic variables.First, everything else being equal, female-headed households tend to be more generous in terms of donation as a percent of income. However, male headed households contribute higher amounts on average. Second, new immigrant philanthropists contribute significantly higher amounts than their Israel-born counterparts and long-time residents. With each additional year of residence in Israel, assimilating and integrating into its society, giving generosity decreases, converging to the level of Israel-born donors. Philanthropists originating from the United States and Western Europe contribute the highest amounts and are found to be the most generous donors compared to those originating from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.The gap between these groups has widened considerably since 2000.Merging philanthropists’ data with the Central Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure Survey, shows that philanthropist households differ from the general population in virtually every category examined. All of the results are statistically significant and robust to alternate specifications.