The UK has fallen out of the top 10 most generous countries in the world, according to the latest iteration of the CAF World Giving Index.
The UK has come in 11th place in this, the eight year of the Charities Aid Foundation global giving report. The index measures how many people have donated, volunteered and helped a stranger in the past month to arrive at an overall giving score. It surveyed 146,000 people from 139 countries for this year’s report as part of the Gallup World Poll.
In terms of its overall ranking, the UK fell three places on the international index from eighth to eleventh in line with wider global trends. The UK’s global index scores were also down on 2016, with both donating money and helping a stranger down 1.8 percentage points, whilst volunteering was down 0.8 percentage points.
The UK had an overall Giving Index score of 50 per cent, down four points from the year before. Some 64 per cent of people surveyed said they’d donated money in the last month, while 58 per cent said they’d recently helped a stranger, while just 28 per cent said they’d volunteered their time.
Giving down across the globe
The CAF report showed that giving was down more or less across the globe, with scores particularly falling amongst the world’s more developed nations. Every Western country in the top 20 including New Zealand, the United States, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Malta, Iceland and Norway had a decreases in their giving scores of between one and five percentage points.
While the UK fell out of the top 10, only two European countries remained with Ireland now being the most generous country in Europe, followed by the Netherlands.
Myanmar retained its top spot as the world’s most generous country for the fourth year in a row, however its overall score was five percentage points lower than in 2016. Myanmar's overall giving index was 65 percentage points, which CAF put down to the prevelance of Buddhism in the country.
The only region which saw significant increases across the board was Africa, which bucked the global downward trend and was the only continent to “see an increase in all three giving behaviours” after years of stagnation.
Global trends over the last five years
The CAF report also showed global giving trends across the last five years as an average, which showed that Myanmar retained the top spot, while the UK moved up to seventh overall, two percentage points behind Ireland in sixth place.
In terms of five year percentage point differences, all but three of the top 20 saw either no change, or a decrease. The only countries to have increased index scores over the last five years were Indonesia, Kenya and, of course, Myanmar.
The report also said that the proportion of people across the globe who reported donating money was the lowest seen for three years.
'Generosity should not be taken for granted'
John Low, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation, said: “This year’s Index results are slightly down on last year’s but it’s too early to know if this is a cause for real concern. It does remind us that our global culture of generosity should never be taken for granted.
“Governments worldwide should make it a priority to encourage giving, build up civil society and seize the opportunity to translate economic development into a culture of generosity that will benefit everyone.”
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