Providence One of ‘Grinchiest’ Cities in the US

Providence One of ‘Grinchiest’ Cities in the US

When it comes to the Christmas spirit, Providence apparently could use a little cheering up. A new national survey has ranked the Renaissance City as the 15th “grinchiest” city in the United States.

The Daily Beast Web site based its survey on how generous people are with their money and time. According to the report, Providence residents on average donate 2.7 percent of their earnings to charity each year and spend just 1.4 percent of their annual wages during the holiday season. Just 23.8 percent of the population is involved in some kind of volunteer work.

The Daily Beast can say what it wants about Providence and its Christmas cheer, but the city did far better than its urban neighbor to the north, Boston, which received the unhappy distinction of being named the grinchiest city in the country.

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It turns out that most major U.S. cities are on the Daily Beast list, including: Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston, and New York—all grinchier than Little Rhody’s capital city. (Click here for the slide show of all the cities.)

THE GRINCHIEST CITIES
From the most grinchiest to the least

1. Boston, MA
2. Detroit, MI
3. Stockton, CA
4. Orlando, FL
5. Denver, CO
6. Los Angeles, CA
7. Sacramento, CA
8. Phoenix, AZ
9. Chicago, IL
10. Miami, FL
11. Houston, TX
12. Cleveland, OH
13. San Jose, CA
14. New York, NY
15. Providence, RI
16. El Paso, TX
17. Fresno, CA
18. Riverside, CA
19. New Orleans, LA
20. Corpus Christi, TX
21. Bakersfield, CA
22. Buffalo, NY
23. Memphis, TN
24. Reno, NV
25. Baltimore, MD
26. Akron, OH
27. Las Vegas, NV
28. Pittsburgh, PA
29. San Antonio, TX
30. San Diego, CA

How they were calculated

The Daily Beast Web site looked at four data points to calculate its rankings.

Gift-giving of each resident: retail spending data was taken from Bundle.com and dividing it by each city’s annual wage, which is available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The site used the numbers from November and December 2009.

Average charitable contribution per dollar: data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics was used to find the average contribution per dollar earned.

Volunteer time: volunteer rate was provided by Volunteering in America.

Average weekly hours worked: also available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Daily Beast says it included this information because “being forced to work longer hours is a holiday no-no from the days of Ebenzer Scrooge.”

All four factors were weighed evenly to calculate the overall score of a city.