Gates Foundation Examines Why the Rich Give
November 9, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is contributing an estimated $400,000 to a study that is to be conducted on the happiness levels, personal histories, and motivations for charitable giving by super-rich individuals, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The study, to be conducted by the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, is scheduled to be released next fall and is thought to be the largest and broadest survey of wealthy Americans ever conducted.
The study focuses on households worth $25-million or more and seeks to collect survey responses from at least 1,000 respondents, considered to be a very large sample size for a poll of the wealthy.
Research on the rich has grown more plentiful as the population of very wealthy individuals continues to grow, but most of these studies have been conducted by companies that want information on how to attract wealthy clients.
But researchers acknowledge that there are many challenges to effectively collecting these data. “The rich aren’t easy to study,” says Russ Alan Prince, president of a research firm that bears his name. “They’re busy. They’re distrustful of marketers and surveys. And most of all, they’re private.”
A Gates Foundation spokesman did not return a call from The Wall Street Journal asking whether Mr. Gates would respond to the survey.
