Upfront: December 2014

The demographics of Business Jet Traveler’s audience are eye-popping. According to one survey, 57 percent of you are CEOs or in other C-level positions. Your annual income averages $1.3 million and your mean net worth is $18.1 million.

That kind of wealth is as rare as it is impressive. And while it’s just as obvious that life at the other end of the spectrum is not rare at all, the statistics about the world’s most impoverished people remain equally eye-popping: 1 billion children, nearly half of all those on the planet, live in poverty—and about 22,000 die every day because of it. According to a 2008 World Bank report, 1.3 billion people in developing countries survive on $1.25 a day or less, which works out to a maximum of $456 a year.

Many of the rest of the people on Earth aren’t faring much better. According to the same report, fully half the world’s inhabitants live on less than $2.50 a day and 80 percent get by on less than $10 a day. Obviously, the vast majority of these people have no net worth to speak of. Many of them have probably never even heard the term.

Yet another set of statistics suggests that affluent Americans may not be doing enough to help these people. As of 2011, those whose earnings placed them in the top 20 percent contributed on ­average 1.3 percent of their incomes to charity. ­Meanwhile, those with earnings in the bottom 20 percent gave 3.2 percent. As The Atlantic pointed out in a 2013 article, “the relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.”

If you’d like to contribute more to charities, you may be wondering where your money would do the most good. For help finding organizations that deliver assistance effectively and match your interests, see “How to Check Out a Charity” on page 12 of this issue. And for advice on how to make large donations, see “Smart Ways to Give to Charity,” by Paul Palazzo, which ran in our June/July issue and is available at bjtonline.com. In addition, our editorial director, Jennifer Leach English, suggests a worthy charity in the On the Fly section of every edition of BJT. 

Speaking of Jennifer, whose column normally appears in this space, she and her family are busy welcoming a new baby, Ruby Grace English, into the world. We send best wishes to them all and look forward to Jennifer’s return from maternity leave.