Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism -- America's Charity Divide -- Who Gives, Who Doesn't, and Why It Matters

Who really cares: the surprising truth about compassionate conversatism: America's charity divide--who gives, who doesn't, and why it matters

Here, economics and public policy scholar Brooks offers up impressive research on the demographics of charitable giving, revealing that religious people (i.e., belonging to any faith, they regularly ... Read full review

The title of this book refers to the surprising find that the author came across in his research: conservatives are much more generous than liberals. This flies in the face of the conventional wisdom where even president Bush had to brandish his 2000 campaign as "compassionate conservatism". It turns out "compassionate" is redundant: conservatives of all stripes outflank liberalism when it comes to charitable giving and generosity. This is a very stable and robust find, and it turns out that it does not depend on the kind of charity: money, time, treasure, blood donations, secular or religious causes, in all those categories conservatives, especially the religious kind, are by far more giving and generous than anyone else. One of the great strengths of this book is the reliance on empirical, quantifiable, data and not case studies or the word of mouth. Even though the book is data driven, it is eminently readable and should be read by anyone who has even the slightest interest in public policy debate.