Happy people give more to charity

Research showed that people who are happy give more money to charity than people who are rich. The results are reported in the "World Giving Index", a research done by the "Charities Aid Foundation".

The inhabitants of New Zealand and Australia donate the most money to charity, the Dutch are on the 7th place. Over 150 countries all over the world participated in the research. Around 95% of the world population is hereby represented. The respondents were asked to rate their happiness and to state how much money they have given to charity over the past month. Subsequently, an association between happiness, wealth and charity was researched. As a result, happiness had a stronger relationship with the amount of money that people spend on charity, than the relationship between people's wealth and the amount of money that people spend on charity. The last association was extremely weak. 77% of the respondents gave a certain amound of money to charity in the past month. Besides this, residents of Turkmenistan are most involved in volunteer work and Liberians are most helpfull to strangers in their country. Furthermore, Malta has the highest rate of generous givers.

An interesting suggestion for further research will be if there is a relationship between media exposure and charity or if the media has a mediating effect on the relationship between happiness and charity. I am wondering if the media has a significant influence and if it correlates with the variables measured in this research.