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Hurricane Harvey hit Southeast Texas last month with tremendous winds and poured an overwhelming amount of rain over thousands of square miles of land. More than 185,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed in Texas, and property damage estimates start at $50 billion. More than 80 people lost their lives, and thousands of families will forever be affected by the storm’s devastation.
The rebuilding will take years and will be very costly. The federal government recently passed legislation to provide nearly $15 billion to FEMA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for disaster relief programs, and additional spending by states and through other federal programs is also underway.
The private sector is responding as well. Houston Texans defensive end J. J. Watt raised a whopping $37 million for victims of Hurricane Harvey. Michael Dell pledged $36 million of his own money to help those affected. Walmart and the Walmart Foundation have committed up to $20 million. And the US Chamber of Commerce has reported that more than $222 million has been donated from the business community.
But helping those in need is not something that ordinary Americans leave in the hands of government, celebrities, and corporations. Donations are pouring in from around the country from Americans of all walks of life. We took a look at who is most engaged in giving to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.
To do so, we collected data on Google searches from August 17 to September 17 that used search terms reflecting an interest in giving money to help Hurricane Harvey victims, assuming that more searches that include the words “donate” and “Harvey,” for example, correlate with more donations.
The first observation is that the response was immediate. As illustrated in the chart below, the interest in donating spiked in the days after August 27, as Harvey began to wind down.
Second, we looked at interest in donating by state, as the map below shows. The map displays relative search intensity by state. States colored dark red reflect a higher proportion of searches that were about donations to Hurricane Harvey relief; those colored light yellow reflect a lower proportion of searches about Harvey donations. At first glance, it appears that several New England states, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Texas itself were the most inclined to donate.
To better understand what traits or characteristics might explain the variations in the map, we performed a regression analysis, which allowed us to identify factors that are associated with responsiveness. In particular, we looked at the following factors for each state: median income, education, race, age, religion, and distance from Houston. Texas was excluded from the analysis. Our analysis shows that states with higher median household incomes were more likely to donate. We also found that states with a higher proportion of elderly people and a population that is generally more religiously observant were more likely to give. Educational attainment and racial composition were not significant factors.
For us, there are two key takeaways from our analysis. First, Americans are generous folk. Our employers, our celebrities, and our neighbors are all helping to ease the burden on those whose lives have been upended. Second, the well-being of the middle class matters. To ensure that our country is well prepared to come to the aid of others in need, we need a strong economy and one that is prosperous across the income spectrum.
Alex Brill is a resident fellow at AEI. Scott Ganz is an assistant professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and an adjunct scholar at AEI.
Helping those in need is not something that ordinary Americans leave in the hands of government, celebrities, and corporations. Donations are pouring in from around the country from Americans of all walks of life.
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