Myanmar, a familiar entry at the top spots of the World Giving Index (WGI), has been ranked as the most generous country in the world for 2016 in a new list compiled by American international performance-management consultancy and polling company Gallup.
In a recent research by Gallup, 91 percent of the respondents in Myanmar said they have donated to a charity during the previous thirty days, the highest rate in global terms. The study results turn the people of Myanmar into the most likely nationality to make charitable donations on a regular basis, putting the nation to be the most generous worldwide in the survey.
Indonesia comes second after Myanmar for 75 percent of its people has given in charity over the past month. Oceania countries Australia and New Zealand are among the top five of the listing with 73 and 71 percent respectively. South European country Malta comes in at four boasting the same percentage as Australia, and all of the rest in the top-ten rankings are also from Europe.
ity of the nationals, Myanmar came first for two straight years in 2014 and 2015 at the World Giving Index, a globally-accepted annual report which ranks over 130 nations in accordance with the collective charity contributions of their peoples. In 2013, Myanmar took second at the index which issued its most recent edition in November 2015. In the 2015 report, the United States and New Zealand followed Myanmar at 3 and 4. The WGI is published by British charity services and supporting organisation Charity Aid Foundation (CAF) based on the data gathered by Gallup. The new list by Gallup comes as a separate report from the WGI. While the WGI looks to three facts of helping a stranger, donating money and volunteering by individuals as a benchmark for judging the countries how charitable they are, the Gallup research only focused on donating. The Buddhist exercise of Sangha Dana (the act of offering things to Buddhist monks) is mainly attributed to the country’s achievement of high scores in studies about charitable donations. Myanmar, a leading Theravada Buddhist nation in the world, has an estimated 500,000 monks. The people of Myanmar are also actively engaged in the practice of giving to various charitable causes instilled by Buddhism.
