Make Britain safer: bring back pistols

We live in peaceful times – at least compared to the past thousand-ish years. Crime, especially personal violence, has been reduced significantly since the 13th century (though not always continuously). The drop looks something like this:

What explains the drastic decline in violent crime, specifically between 1500 and 1900? Why has crime spiked up (moderately) from 1900 – 2010? The widely preferred explanation for the fall in crime – particularly homicide – is referred to as the “civilizing process”, which claims that criminal breaking points can be attributed to the growth of centralised power (i.e. state power), which created more structure and stability in regional areas.

The conventional wisdom…attributes the decline in personal violence to the “civilizing process” first suggested by Elias (1939) who hypothesized that the primary cause was the transformation of Europe from a large number of fiefdoms in the Middle Ages to a small number of large, centralized nation states under a single monarch. The centralised state instituted and enforced a monopoly on violence, known as the king’s peace.

To this day, the ‘civilizing process’ remains the longest-running, widely accepted theory and continues to shape crime and policing policy. But, despite its acceptance, there are some very notable flaws in the theory, including the fact that much of the evidence shapes up to disprove the thesis:

Belgium and the Netherlands were at the forefront of the decline, yet they lacked strong centralized governments. When Sweden joined the trend, it wasn’t on the heels of an expansion in state power either. Conversely, the Italian states were in the rearguard of the decline in violence, yet their governments wielded an enormous bureaucracy and police force...

...the civilizing process theory is not consistent with the rise in violence between 1200 and 1500, it does not explain the sudden and precipitous decline and reversal of trend that occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries, and it is not consistent with the 1793 reversal of trend.

A new paper from Carlisle E. Moody published last month provides an alternative theory last century’s decline in violence. The paper, “Firearms and the Decline of Violence in Europe: 1200-2010”, finds that the sudden historical drops in crime are consistent with the “invention and proliferation of compact, concealable, ready-to-use firearms” which “caused potential assailants to recalculate the probability of a successful assault and seek alternatives to violence.”

And unlike the civilizing process theory, Moody's firearms theory remains consistent with the evidence and breaks in violence. As concealed weapons became more available historically, crime rate dropped radically. (Bolded mine.)

Homicide was increasing before the invention of concealable firearms and decreasing after. While there may be many other theories, the sudden and spectacular decline in violence around 1505 and again around 1610-1621 is consistent with the theory that the invention and proliferation of concealable firearms was responsible, at least in part, for the decline in homicide. The landscape of personal violence was suddenly and permanently altered by the introduction of a new technology. The handgun was the ultimate equalizer. The physically strong could no longer feel confident of domination over the weak.

Some of these arguments may sound familiar; they're the ones those crazies over the States tend to go on about - guns 'equalize' the playing field regardless of physical strength and 'psyche out' violent perpetrators who might be more willing to attack their victims if they knew they were unarmed.

But according to the report, those crazies have some strong points. The report cites several studies which found that the possibility that a victim might be armed deters criminals from acting:

Even in the United States today, criminals are reluctant to encounter armed victims. In 1981 Wright and Rossi interviewed 1874 incarcerated felons in ten states. Eighty-one percent agreed with the statement, “A smart criminal always tries to find out if his potential victim is armed.” Thirty-four percent report being, “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim. (Wright and Rossi 1986, pp. 132-155) Using the same data, Kleck found that, among criminals who had committed violent crimes or burglaries, 42 percent had been deterred during an attack by an armed victim and 56 percent agreed that, “most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.”(Kleck 1997, p. 180)

Perhaps, then, we might admit (based on evidence, consistency and lack of other credible theories) that firearms reduced violence historically; but in the modern era, guns cause more violence than they deter. But that's not the case either:

The government in England has been placing increasingly stringent controls on guns especially handguns, since 1920, reducing both the actual and the effective supply of firearms. (Malcolm 2002) The homicide rate in England in 1920 was 0.84 and the assault rate was 2.39. In 1999, the corresponding rates were 1.44 and 419.29. Thus both the homicide and assault rates increased as the effective supply of handguns declined.

That's a 17,544% increase in England's assault crime over the past 100 years. In truth, there is no explicit correlation between gun control laws and murder rates between countries (Switzerland and Israel “have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.”) It is the case that handguns used in crimes in the UK have doubled since they were banned in 1997. Guns can't account fully for the drop in crime throughout the 20th century, nor can they account fully for the rise in violent crime over the past 100 years, but there is no doubt that accessibility to firearms has worked as a successful deterrence against criminals in progressive societies and that bans have ensured that any handguns in England are only falling into criminal hands.

Should we proliferate handguns around England tomorrow? Probably not. (Obviously we should begin with firearm training sessions - safety first!)  But liberalizing gun laws should not be off the table. Historically, they've earned it.

Let's have a Hayekian welfare state

The latest issue of Econ Journal Watch discusses the correlation between support for economic regulation and welfare state redistribution among economists. Why, Daniel Klein asks in the issue’s opening chapter, is an economist who supports a lot of economic regulation so likely to support a lot of income redistribution as well?

How are issues of progressive taxation, redistribution, and universal government provision so much like, say, the issues of public utility regulation, antitrust, consumer protection, workplace safety and labor standards, environmental protection, financial regulation, insurance regulation, land-use controls, housing regulation, agricultural regulation, healthcare regulation, transportation regulation, energy regulation, and so on?

A good question. He suggests that economists are motivated at a basic level by their feelings about ‘governmentalization’ – a general preference for or against using the government to solve problems that face society.

But like Andreas Bergh, another contributor, I am not convinced that at least one other configuration is so unlikely. Bergh argues that a ‘Hayekian welfare state’ is possible and may be more attractive than Klein suggests. I agree.

Probably the strongest general argument against regulation is given by Hayek, who argues that in a complex world our actions often have unexpected consequences. A ‘spontaneous order’ is a non-random system that has come about from individually-chosen actions, not from the design of a central planner. A language that does not have a central designing body might be an example, as might a free market economy.

In Adam Ferguson’s words, these are the result of human action but not of human design. Hayek’s argument is that because events in these orders have been shaped by the individuals’ choices within them, what may appear to an outside observer to be an inefficiency or failing may have a hidden logic to it.

Central planners or rule-makers often lack the information they would need to make good regulations, and in situations where people’s tastes or innovations may change over time, they may not ever be able to make regulations that achieve their own goals.

This argument has been added to by more recent work that has emphasised the value of feedback loops in learning (which markets have, but regulators usually don't), and the dangers of imposing the same error across an entire system. If we think that the future is basically unknowable in a complex world, and so most plans are wrong, but that we can learn from our mistakes and successes, then we should want as many different experiments as possible, with as many different mistakes to learn from.

In practical terms, that means that we should have a predisposition against regulation, even regulation that appears to solve problems, if it holds people back from experiments. There are also serious examples of regulations leading to bad things that are even worse because everyone has been forced to make the same mistake, which strengthens this predisposition even more. The more complex a system is is, the more we should value pluralism.

All of this has to do with having limited knowledge in a complex world, not incentives, though of course there may be good incentives-based arguments to be made on a case-by-case basis against certain regulations.

But this doesn’t tell us very much about the distribution of wealth in a society. To use Bergh’s terminology, redistribution may be something that can be done with relatively low amounts of knowledge. That doesn’t mean that it can’t fail – clearly it can, very easily, if the level of redistribution is set too high (or too low) – or that the system itself be badly designed.

The particular distribution of wealth in an economy may be an efficient reflection of who is most productive, and interventions that try to correct for that are likely to fail for the same reasons that other interventions designed at improving market efficiency will fail.

But we may have non-economic concerns about the distribution of wealth as well. An economy in which everyone is paid according to their productivity may be very brutal for people who are not very productive and cannot change that. We may wish to redistribute income for their welfare.

We might also want to redistribute money to encourage the sort of experimentation that drives innovation, above. Or, as Ben has argued, to make the market focus more on satisfying the wants of unproductive (ie, poor) people than it currently does.

A good argument against this would be that we don’t need the state to redistribute – that, left alone, private charity will be enough. There is some evidence for this position but not enough, yet. Maybe some day there will be and I will change my mind.

Until then, I am with Bergh. A ‘Hayekian welfare state’ would do almost no regulation of the economy, but redistribute quite a bit of money for welfare reasons. This looks not just possible, but very desirable.

It usually begins with Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was born on this day in 1905. “It usually begins with Ayn Rand,” said author Jerome Tuccille of this Russian-American thinker, novelist and screenwriter. An amazing number of people have come to support a free society and a free-market economy through reading her novels, especially The Fountainhead (1935) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), in their student years. Those novels may not be works of great literature. The characters are little nuanced, more mouthpieces for Rand’s political and philosophical views. But decades on, they remain hugely influential, because they have what young people – and others looking for some purpose in life – actually want. Their weaknesses are the obverse of their strengths. Her heroes are role models: ambitious, purposive, independent and strong; ruthlessly self-interested and yet deeply moral. These are stories with a message, a coherent worldview that conquers all: the morality of rational self-interest. Atlas Shrugged, for instance, describes a world in which industry leaders overcome the stifling controls of over-mighty governments by closing down production and creating an alternate order based on freedom and strict respect for personal property. Unlikely, for sure: but it makes you think.

No surprise, then, that many of the world’s leading businesspeople have been influenced by this twentieth-century Russian émigré to America, whose fiction and philosophy has sold 25 million copies. One, Lars Seier Christensen, founder and CEO of the hugely successful online investment broker Saxo Bank, gave the Adam Smith Institute’s annual Ayn Rand Lecture in London last year. Even though Rand died in 1982, he observed, her robust individualist approach to economic and social life is needed more now than ever.

Rand held that the key thing that makes human beings unique is their reason. We betray our species and our selves if we do not use it. But to act rationally, we need a long-term view of the world. It might sound good to tax the wealthy and spend the money on education, welfare and much else. But there is no free lunch. Those short-term benefits come at a long-term cost, because taxation depresses risk-taking and enterprise. As in Atlas Shrugged, the majority cannot exploit the minority and expect them to put up with it forever.

The long-term view reveals that most regulation is irrational. Minimum wage laws, for example, might boost the wages of poorer workers; but by making it too costly for employers to hire unskilled or untested applicants, they deny hundreds of thousands of young people jobs and consign them to the welfare rolls. American regulations that forced banks to lend to poorer people gave families ‘affordable housing’ but created the sub-prime crisis and the crash.

It is the same in business. Rational self-interest means long-term self-interest, not short-term greed. Greed comes back to haunt you, as certain bankers will testify. It is interesting that about the only American bank to come out of the financial crash unscathed was BB&T, run by John Allison – an adherent of Ayn Rand’s principles and another past Ayn Rand Lecturer. There are only two stable relationships, he insists: win-win or lose-lose. You don’t need self-sacrifice or even altruism. You benefit yourself by benefiting others.

Money is not the end. Happiness is. If people in a business – from the CEO to the cleaners in the works canteen – know that they are part of an enterprise that makes a positive difference to others, they will have purpose and self-esteem. That will make it a better business – and will make them happier, more complete human beings.

The divorce of theology from modern social science and public policy

In modern discourse, talk of God, divinity, spirituality and so on is forcibly divorced from the sciences (considered in the broadest sense). Contemporary mainstream moral philosophy, political economy, political science, economics (not to mention the natural sciences) rarely, if at all, discuss the consequences of the nature of God for the questions they all address. Consider this: God, by definition, is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Now, without introducing any metaphysical complications, we can say that either God exists or God doesn’t exist (my opinion is that the former is true). If God doesn’t exist, then we can continue working within and articulating the scientific paradigms that currently permeate throughout society. However, as soon as we presume God’s existence, theology becomes fundamental for understanding any other form of knowledge whatsoever. It becomes a primary concern of metaphysics, epistemology and logic. This then feeds through to the sciences that we practice, albeit imperfectly, in modern society. Depending on the presumed conception of God, methodologies and their employment as well as theories and their applications will differ accordingly.

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates considers the nature of the Gods whilst describing his grand, centrally planned society. In India, the caste system is said to have had divine origins (though its interpretation and enforcement became increasingly skewed with time) and this has exerted a profound impact on the socioeconomic organisation of the subcontinent that continues to this day. One of the most famous miracles of Jesus Christ was feeding the multitude with one loaf of bread – to put it simply, divinity can deal with the fundamental economic problem of scarcity for the welfare of all.

Benedict de Spinoza, like many other philosophers and theologians of his age and the preceding ones, offers his readers an account that includes both a proof and a description of the nature of God; to put one of the main conclusions in Spinoza’s Ethics crudely; everything that comes naturally and feels right is good because it has its origins in God and God is good. Now, that which comes naturally is done freely and, intuitively, freedom feels right.

So all this talk of free markets and a free society has a natural resonance with humanity. There is something undoubtedly divine about free will, freedom and a free society.

Wikipedia: Another answer to the tragedy of the commons

The tragedy of the commons is an oft-cited theoretical example by those who advocate government intervention. It postulates that, without regulation and intervention, public goods that everyone has an interest in using will actually not be provided (or at least not efficiently or to an optimal quantity) if contributions are voluntary. The logic is that everyone’s dominant course of action is to essentially just refrain from contributing because, if one contributes and others don’t, then the public good is not provided and their payoff is worse than if they don’t contribute and the public good is not provided. Additionally, if they don’t contribute and the public good is provided, the individual’s payoff is higher than if they do contribute and the public good is provided. In this sense, a society full of rational, self-interested individuals (as this scenario represents it) could actually lead to a harmful or sub-optimal outcome for society in the long run. However, Wikipedia is a prominent, empirical illustration of how the tragedy of the commons does not always hold since the website runs purely on private donations. Periodically, the site’s owners ask for donations to maintain it and keep it running ad-free. They claim that if everyone who read their plea paid £3, then fundraising would be over within an hour – nice in principle but not everyone pays up in practice. Some, inevitably, end up contributing more than others and many don’t contribute monetarily at all.

The following chart lists the percentage of donators corresponding to each reason for donating to Wikipedia, according to Wikipedia.

Conversely, here are the reasons cited for not donating:

Of course, one might argue that the knowledge found on Wikipedia is unreliable. However, a study published in Nature found that Wikipedia “is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopaedia Britannica”. Of course, Encyclopaedia Britannica attempted to refute the study. Access to a vast store of monitored, reviewed information via Wikipedia is an incredible asset to humanity and this asset is made possible entirely through voluntary contributions (whether this be in terms of time spent editing or money contributed) rather than through the coercive dictates that people are so often subject to.

Furthermore, it’s interesting to note that if you were to, hypothetically, replace “donating to Wikipedia” with “tax” in the second bar chart, you might find a lot of people agreeing with the affordability, with unwillingness to pay tax based on principle or their belief that it would not be used properly. Similarly, people may want to contribute time to society rather than pay money to preserve it.

In our rapidly changing world, voluntary contributions to fund public goods may become feasible sooner rather than later.

Sometimes men and women want different things

Sometimes men and women want different things. Their actions in labour markets are one example of this. That's OK, even if it results from socially constructed gender roles, so long as it leads to good lives for both genders. One recent example of where this might be the case comes in a new paper studying the mathematically gifted. (Hat tip to Stephen Hsu).

Two cohorts of intellectually talented 13-year-olds were identified in the 1970s (1972–1974 and 1976–1978) as being in the top 1% of mathematical reasoning ability (1,037 males, 613 females). About four decades later, data on their careers, accomplishments, psychological well-being, families, and life preferences and priorities were collected.

Their accomplishments far exceeded base-rate expectations: Across the two cohorts, 4.1% had earned tenure at a major research university, 2.3% were top executives at “name brand” or Fortune 500 companies, and 2.4% were attorneys at major firms or organizations; participants had published 85 books and 7,572 refereed articles, secured 681 patents, and amassed $358 million in grants.

For both males and females, mathematical precocity early in life predicts later creative contributions and leadership in critical occupational roles. On average, males had incomes much greater than their spouses’, whereas females had incomes slightly lower than their spouses’. Salient sex differences that paralleled the differential career outcomes of the male and female participants were found in lifestyle preferences and priorities and in time allocation.

Men and women differed widely on a large number of metrics. Particularly, men, much more than women wanted high pay, risk taking, merit-based compensation and, work involving physical objects. On the other hand the top three things women valued more than men were, in order: working no more than 40 hours a week, working no more than 50 hours a week, and working no more than 60 hours a week.

It's OK for people to have different preferences, and it's OK for those preferences to differ not just within groups but across groups. That's because satisfying people's job preferences is what gives them general satisfaction and happiness with their job (shock! horror!) Some people may want men and women to be more alike, and that's fine, but we should do this keeping in mind the costs that may impose on both groups.

Markets make us better people

One of the most common objections to market-based societies is that they erode non-market motivations to doing good. Critics, with this objection, say that although markets can in some areas latch onto greed and turn it to society's benefit in some areas ("It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest") they can also pervert and corrupt existing motivations in domains where markets are inappropriate. Consider blood donations: many argue that if you start paying for blood donations then people will stop seeing them as a good deed but as a market activity, and lose their 'intrinsic motivation' to give blood. Overall you might get less blood, or less good blood than before, even though you're now spending money to get it. Back in 2012, Harvard communitarian political philosopher Michael Sandel (famous for his online lectures), wrote a hugely popular book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets making roughly these arguments (read a wonderful review here).

These questions are discussed widely, but what's weird is they tend to be tackled mainly with a priori thought experiment arguments like mine about blood, above, and anecdotes, even though they are empirical questions. We can actually test whether you get less or worse blood when you pay for it! (You don't) We can test whether people are less pro-social when you add extra market institutions!

A new paper by Björn Bartling, Roberto Weber and Lan Yao, "Do Markets Erode Social Responsibility?", in the Quarterly Journal of Economics tries to do as much:

This paper studies whether concerns for social responsibility persist in repeated market interaction. We develop a laboratory product market, in which socially responsible behavior by firms and consumers involves incurring additional production costs to mitigate potential negative externalities imposed on individuals otherwise uninvolved with the market.

The data from Study 1, conducted in Switzerland, show, first, that there is a non-trivial share of socially responsible products supplied and demanded in all our market conditions, and that—importantly—the market share of the fair product is stable over time in all conditions.

Second, the socially responsible product, which costs more to produce, sells at a price premium that persists with market experience. In most cases, this price premium increases over time, suggesting that consumers’ willingness to pay for socially responsible products is not eliminated with repeated market interaction. Third, we show that individual-level market behavior is consistent with a preference for positive social impact, though such concerns are heterogeneous.

In other words: markets do not erode existing pro-social motivation; they complement it.

Objectivism and modern society

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is polled to be the second most influential book in Americans' lives, coming in second only to the Bible. Whether this statistic is skewed or not, there is no doubt that Rand’s longest work has had a lasting impact on the hearts and minds of its readers since its publication in 1957. It may be too soon to know if it stands the test of time, but it has certainly persevered with power and passion. It’s hard to understand how Atlas Shrugged has remained so popular while the views of its author remain so controversial. Forget the left-wing masses—many self-proclaimed libertarians avoid being associated with her last name. In most circles (even sympathetic ones), the Randian badge is not worn openly.

Furthermore, she is consistently attacked by critics who paint her philosophy of objectivism as radical, rudely selfish and dangerous to modern society. When most people today—even on the right—recognise the need for some form of welfare or safety net, how can one include Rand’s voice in modern discourse?

At the ASI’s annual Ayn Rand Lecture on Monday night, guest speaker David Sokol addressed an audience of almost 300 attendees and reminded all of them why Atlas Shrugged transcends the criticisms and attacks on objectivism.

Unlike most philosophers and economists, Rand was able to connect philosophy and fiction in a way that inspired people to observe and revere the power of individualism. As Sokol pointed out, the right to have hope for yourself and whatever you choose to build is going to win against any promise a government can make.

Even in the 1950’s, Rand could see what direction governments was heading—that entrapments were disguised as promises, as governments increasingly encroached on individual's rights and property:

(Bureaucrat) Floyd Ferris:"You honest men are such a problem and such a headache. But we knew you'd slip sooner or later . . . [and break one of our regulations] . . . this is just what we wanted."

Rearden: "You seem to be pleased about it."

Ferris: "Don't I have good reason to be?"

Rearden: "But, after all, I did break one of your laws."

Ferris: "Well, what do you think they're there for?"

Ferris: "Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken.”

Today, some of the world’s most important leaders are looking to snare businesses, paint them as the enemy, and project the idea that the state is responsible for the success of business, job growth, and any individual achievement. It's an uncomfortable and deeply flawed narrative—and fortunately, not a particularly successful one. Regardless of bureaucratic narrative, Atlas Shrugged continues to inspire individuals in a way that collectivist approaches can't come close to; as such, Rand and her philosophy have secured their place in modern society.

To see photos of the ASI's Ayn Rand Lecture, click here.

David Cameron vs feminism

Today there was a minor kerfuffle about the Prime Minister’s refusal to wear a t-shirt that says “This is what a feminist looks like” after Elle, a women’s magazine, asked him to do so for a marketing campaign. Elle had a go at Cameron, saying that “It should be simple. Do you believe that men and women are equal? Do you believe men and women should have the same rights? The same opportunities? Yes? Then you are a feminist.”

Well, that sounds pretty reasonable! I don’t see how anyone could object to that. But the plot thickens later on. All these unobjectionable, bland claims apparently relate to quite specific public policy issues, like unequal pay and political representation for women. According to Elle, we need feminism because "for every £1 a man earns in the UK, a woman earns 80p. Women make up only 35% of senior managers in the UK and an estimated 30,000 women a year lose their jobs as a result of pregnancy-related discrimination. In politics, fewer than one in four MPs is a woman, and there are only five women in the cabinet out of 22 ministers".

In other words, we need feminism so we can do something about very specific issues (presumably in specific ways, since the Fawcett Society is involved which has specific policies to address all these things).

This sounds to me like a ‘motte and bailey’ argument. Scott Alexander explains in more detail in part two of this excellent essay here (if you have the time, read that, not this). The name come from medieval times, when a ‘motte’ was a defensible castle surrounded by a profitable village called the ‘bailey’. Everyone would work out in the bailey until they got attacked and had to retreat to the safety of the motte.

A motte and bailey argument starts off by defining itself in very defensible way. “Feminism means thinking that men and women should be treated equally.” That’s the safe, defensible motte.

It then extends that reasonable-seeming claim to all sorts of controversial claims – unequal political representation demands all-women shortlists; unequal pay demands more invasive laws to equalise pay between men and women. That’s the bailey where the actual (political or cultural) advancements can be made.

Let’s say you attack the bailey by saying that you're not a feminist because you think the policies advocated by feminists are bad, or the problems they identify are not even problems at all. Maybe you find, as Ben recently has, that “if you control for background (i.e. skills and talent) and exit (i.e. women staying in the workforce) women earn more than men and get more aggressively promoted than men”, which implies that the claims made by feminists about unequal pay needing new laws are simply incorrect.

Feminism may also be wrong about many other things, such as claims about men and women’s brains being biologically the same or the pervasiveness of a ‘rape culture’. These are substantive elements of what feminists define as feminism, and they may be right or wrong. It’s legitimate (albeit quite possibly mistaken) to think these claims are wrong, and hence to decline to wear a 'This is what a feminist looks like' t-shirt.

But do that and many feminists will retreat into the defensible motte, as Elle have today. David Cameron doesn’t think men and women should be equal! David Cameron doesn’t think men and women should have the same rights! Feminism is very simple!

This is dishonest and manipulative. And an open society requires honesty in political discourse. David Cameron is often accused of pandering to fashion. He deserves credit for refusing to do so this time.

Unsurprising: Migrants give back to new communities (often more so than natives)

Migrants in high-income economies are more inclined to give to charity than native-born citizens, this Gallup poll finds.

[High-income economies are referred to as "the North"/ middle- to low-income economies are referred to as "the South".]

From 2009-2011, 51% of migrants who moved to developed countries from other developed countries said they donated money to charity, whereas only 44% of native-born citizens claimed to donate. Even long-term immigrants (who had been in their country of residence for over five years) gave more money to charity than natives–an estimated 49%.

Even 34% of migrants moving from low-income countries to high-income countries said they gave money to charity in their new community – a lower percentage than long-term migrants and native-born citizens, but still a significant turn-out, given that most of these migrants will not have an immediate opportunity to earn large, disposable incomes. The poll also found that once migrants get settled, their giving only goes up.

Migrants seem to donate their time and money less when moving from one low-income country to another; though as Gallup points out, the traditional definitions of ‘charity’ cannot always be applied to developing countries, where aid and volunteerism often take place outside formal structures and appear as informal arrangements within communities instead.

It’s no surprise either that the Gallup concludes this:

Migrants' proclivity toward giving back to their communities can benefit their adopted communities. Policymakers would be wise to find out ways to maintain this inclination to give as long as migrants remain in the country.

This is yet another piece of evidence that illustrates the benefits of immigration for society as a whole. (It also highlights the insanity of Cameron's recent proposal to curb the number of Eurozone migrants coming to the UK). Not only does the UK need more immigrants “to avoid a massive debt crisis by 2050,” but apparently it needs them for a community morale boost as well.