Although it has retained its top ranking, Myanmar’s score is five percentage points lower than last year’s report, slipping from 70% back down to 65%, in line with its score in 2013 and 2014. This lower score is generated by fewer people claiming to have helped a stranger or volunteered their time in the month prior to interview. The proportion of people in Myanmar who donated money is unchanged since last year at 91%.

It may be surprising that Myanmar ranks first in global generosity. In 2015, the National League for Democracy came to power, overthrowing a 25 year military dictatorship. This change in government has not been smooth, with conflict arising in the country throughout 2016, resulting in allegations of serious human rights abuses against displaced Rohingya Muslims. Although the WGI does not comment on these events in the report, we are all shocked at the reports of human rights abuses coming out of Myanmar in recent months.

In a previous blog post, we discussed potential explanations to why Myanmar is continually coming out on top of the World Giving Index (WGI). 80-90% of Myanmar’s population is Buddhist, with the vast majority following the Theravada branch of the religion. Followers of this branch of Buddhism take part in small and frequent acts of giving, specifically to support those living a monastic lifestyle.

Africa is the only continent to increase across all three categories, with eight of the thirteen most improved nations being from the African continent. One particular success was the result of Sierra Leone, which has climbed up the rankings in the helping a stranger category, rising from 8th to first place, with 81% of participants responding that they had helped a stranger in the month prior to the interview. Since 2013, Sierra Leone has undergone a series of crises, such as the 2014 Ebola outbreak, a decline in iron ore prices and a subsequent economic crash in 2015. However, these events have only served to increase the likelihood of the population to help a stranger, as there was a 19% increase in this category since 2013. This suggests that a culture of giving can not only endure but find reserves of compassion that ensure communities can be resilient even in desperate times.

Ecuador was the only country to improve in both 2014-2015, and then again in the 2015-2016 period. However, our report suggests that such a large jump in giving this year could be explained by a generous response to the earthquake which struck the country in April 2016. As discussed in previous World Giving Index reports, it is common to see an increase in charitable giving in times of natural disasters.

This year’s WGI highlights the increasing trend of giving in transitional economies. The report often confounds assumptions that wealthier nations are the most generous and this years results show that only six members of the G20 club of large economies appear in the list of top 20 countries (Indonesia, United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and Germany). Our data shows that where developed and developing nations decreased in charitable giving over the last year, transition economies grew 0.3 percentage points in giving to charity. Projections by the Brookings institute suggest that 2.4 billion people could transition into the middle classes by 2030. Building on this, our Groundwork for Growing Giving suggests that if this emerging middle class were to donate just 0.5% of their spending to charitable causes – about the same as the Republic of Korea – it would generate $319 billion a year for civil society organisations.



