The share of American households that donate to charity has been steadily declining since the Great Recession and fell to just under half in 2018, a report from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy finds.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the report, The Giving Environment: Understanding Pre-Pandemic Trends in Charitable Giving (28 pages, PDF), found that only 49.6 percent of respondents in the school's Philanthropy Panel Study reported giving to charity in 2018, the lowest level since the study began tracking the philanthropic behaviors and attitudes of more than nine thousand households in 2000, when 66 percent gave to charity. The average amount donated by those households fell 28 percent between 2000 and 2018, from $1,790 to $1,280.

According to the report, the decline in giving to religious causes, which began in 2004, has outpaced the decline in giving to secular causes, which began in 2010, after the Great Recession. The downward trends in both the share of households that donate to religious causes (down from 46 percent in 2000 to 29 percent in 2018) and the average amount given to religious causes (down from $1,107 in 2000 to $771 in 2018) have outpaced the declines in the share of households that donate to secular causes (down from 55 percent in 2000 to 42 percent in 2018) and the average amount given to secular causes (down from $684 in 2000 to $509 in 2018).

The report also found that giving rates fell across all racial groups — from 48.7 percent to 32.8 percent among Black households, from 71.2 percent to 57.9 percent among white households, from 44 percent to 25.5 percent among Latinx households, and from 60.4 percent to 51 percent among households of other races. Giving amounts also declined for Black ($999 to $619), white ($1,947 to $1,630), and Latinx ($555 to $291) households.

The report's authors found that just over a third of the decline in giving participation could be attributed to changes in income and wealth, while a decline in interpersonal trust accompanied the drop in giving rates, especially among younger Americans. The authors also note that even as the share of households that donate to charity fell, average donations by those who do give increased.

"The overall pie [in giving] is slowly moving toward the ultra-wealthy," John List, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who studies giving, told the Associated Press, adding that this shift could be dangerous. "Rich people give to causes that rich people want to give to. You have a very different supply of goods and services from the charitable community when the rich people give versus when the middle class or lower class gives."