The market for charity in England

Combining household survey data with information from charity accounts, we analyse both sides of the market for charitable donations in England and Wales. On the demand side, we find evidence of a strong positive relationship between regional wealth and household donor behaviour. On the supply side, we find that charity income is concentrated in southern England and metropolitan areas, while the number of local charities per household is similar across regions outside London. Although there is significant positive correlation between a household’s propensity to donate and the number of charities in the region, this disappears as soon as we account for total household expenditure, suggesting that households donate when budgets allow rather than because of a high charity presence in their region. We thus conjecture that charities locate to wealthier regions so as to profit from higher rates of donating. Acknowledgements and disclaimer The authors are grateful to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Charity Commission for providing the data. These organisations bear no responsibility for the further analysis and interpretation presented in this paper. All existing errors remain those of the current authors. The market for charity in England and Wale