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Even when controlling for big versus small government philosophies, this paper reports quantitatively significant cleavages in the probabilities of supporting increased federal antipoverty efforts that persist between conservatives and liberals, and Republicans and Democrats. However, predicted conditional probabilities show that support for increased welfare spending or federal responsibility in raising the standard of living of the poor is not overwhelming, even among liberals and Democrats, although support for increased federal assistance to the poor is fairly strong, even among conservatives and Republicans. Hence, we consider assertions that conservatives and Republicans do not care about the poor to be extreme and unsupported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eliminating or reducing the federal charitable deduction can have serious impacts on the level of charitable donations. Tax price elasticity estimates from a multivariate sample selection model indicate that changing the deduction to a 12% tax credit would have reduced individual donations in 2012 by 18.9% if applied to itemizing taxpayers and by 10.5% if extended to nonitemizers. Elimination of the deduction would have led to a 35% reduction in individual charitable donations. Even if coupled with cuts in marginal tax rates, eliminating the charitable deduction will still likely result in substantial reductions given the inelastic income elasticities of charitable donations. The estimates justify the ardent opposition of many in the nonprofit sector to the more radical proposals for changing the tax treatment of charitable contributions. (JEL D34, C34), I. INTRODUCTION The empirical literature on charitable donations is comprised largely of studies that examine total giving (e.g., Andreoni, Gale, and Scholz 1996; Bakija and Heims 2011; Brown and Lankford [...]