Dan Hungerman on Religious Charity and Crowding Out

tonygill — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:00:23 +0000

Dan Hungerman — assistant professor of economics at Notre Dame and Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research — joins Tony to discuss his pathbreaking research on how government and other secular entities compete with religious organizations. The first half of the podcast is devoted to Prof. Hungerman’s research on how government welfare spending and taxation “crowds out” religiously-provided services and charitable giving. Dan shows how FDR’s New Deal during the Great Depression led to a significant decline in church-based welfare, which can be attributed directly to a “crowding out” effect. We turn our attention to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which represented a rollback of several social service programs. Dan discusses his research showing that the Presbyterian Church responded by increasing its provision of welfare to communities facing a reduction in federal aid. The effect of government welfare and taxation on individual charitable contributions becomes the focus of our discussion and we examine how the racial diversity of a community can affect “warm glow” giving. The podcast concludes with an examination of how the elimination of “blue laws” allowed shopping malls and other secular activities to compete for people’s attention on Sunday mornings and how this reduced church attendance and tithing. Dan offers his thoughts about the relationship between the National Football League and religion in this concluding segment. Recorded: August 30, 2010.

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Dan Hungerman on Religious Charity and Crowding Out