Bangladesh 69th most generous country in the world: Report

What indicates how generous the citizens of a country are? Is it kindness, being charitable or something else?

The UK-based Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) developed a method to find out. Based on the answers to questions on three domains, a picture can be found of a country's generosity. 

Recently a survey-based report by CAF ranked Bangladesh as the 69th most generous in the 2021 World Giving Index, with the country being among the top most improved in the list over the past five years.

The research was based on a 2020 Gallup survey of more than 121,000 people in 114 countries. In most countries surveyed, 1,000 questionnaires were completed by a representative sample of individuals living across the country.

The study asked people if they had helped a stranger, given money or volunteered for a good cause in the month before being interviewed.

In Bangladesh, 63% of people surveyed had helped a stranger, 22% donated to a charity and 13% had volunteered for a good cause.

Indonesia was placed first with a score of 69, up from 59 the last time the index was published in 2018, also the first time.

More than eight in 10 Indonesians donated money this year and the country's rate of volunteering was more than three times the global average, said the report.

Zakat, a traditional form of Islamic charity, was the main driver the donations.

Reports suggest that Zakat payments globally were particularly high in 2020 as a response to the pandemic.

Neil Heslop, chief executive of CAF, said the importance of donations linked to faith can be seen once again in Indonesia, Thailand and elsewhere.

"The number of people who reported helping a stranger stands at a staggering 55%, the highest figure we have recorded in our annual survey and one that speaks to the wave of genuine concern for our neighbours that so many of us witnessed in our day to day lives," he mentioned.

Globally, some of the developed countries with very well-established charitable traditions and highly developed civic infrastructure witnessed this year's biggest drop in scores. Switzerland, Ireland, Netherlands, USA all dropped out of the Top 10.

The USA saw a significant decline across all three scores, a trend which accelerated in 2020.

Interestingly, economically-disadvantaged countries like Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana came in the Top 10 generous countries in the CAF 2021 index.

India bagged the 14th spot, as 61% Indians said they had helped a stranger during the survey period.

More than 3 billion people helped someone they didn't know in 2020.

Globally, more people reported that they had helped a stranger in 2020 than the study had ever recorded before in the CAF World Giving Index. Helping a stranger is the most commonly performed of giving behaviours across the world -- over half (55%) of the world's adult population did so in 2020, equating to more than three billion people.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the pandemic, donating money is up across the globe.

More people donated money in 2020 than had done so in the last five years (31%), whilst levels of volunteering in 2020 remained relatively unaffected at the global level.