(The Center Square) – Arizona was ranked the eighth least charitable state in America, according to a recent report by WalletHub.
Chip Lupo, an analyst for WalletHub, told The Center Square the company measured two factors: volunteering/service and charitable giving.
Lupo said Arizona’s ranking is “not a very good score.”
Arizona ranked 31st in volunteer and service and 49th in charitable giving, the report said.
Lupo noted Arizona ranked seventh among states for volunteer hours.
A factor in Arizona’s lower ranking in charitable giving is the number of snowbirds and retirees who come to the state for part of the year, according to Lupo.
He added that another reason for this disparity is that many retirees are “on fixed incomes” in today’s economy, which means they don’t have much “disposable income.”
“Arizonans are eager to give up their time, but for whatever reason, [they] aren’t able to give as much out of their own pockets,” Lupo told The Center Square.
On top of this, Arizona ranked 10th overall in the country for having “top-ranked charities per capita,” Lupo said, describing this as a “good number.”
The states that had the highest scores in the list were Wyoming (No. 1), Utah (No. 2) and Maryland (No. 3).
Lupo said Wyoming and Utah had high percentages of residents who volunteered. People in these states live in small towns where there “seems to be more of a sense of community,” the analyst noted.
“ Everyone, for the most part, knows each other. So there’s more of a willingness to be able to come together to do volunteer work for a specific cause, whether it’s raising money for an organization or maybe a family who’s in distress,” he explained.
Lupo said the states that tended to be more “conservative” and “traditional” had higher rates of “community engagement” and “volunteer numbers.”
The states with the lowest ranking on the list were Mississippi (No. 48), Nevada (No. 49) and New Mexico (No. 50).
