If you don’t like one charity, substitute it with another. That seems to be the thought that has reduced the donations pouring into Catholic church. The sex-abuse cases seems to have affected the sensibilities of many Catholics, who simply stopped giving to the church. According to Dan M Hungerman of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the sex-abuse scandal generated over $3 billion in donations to non-Catholic faiths and a 2-million-member fall in the Catholic population. As a result, many conventional theories have been challenged by these results, suggesting that shocks and policies that focus on one religious group can have spillover effects in other religious groups. However, the negative effect of the scandal in the Catholic church did not lead to an overall decrease in religious participation. 

 

Title: NBER Working Paper No. 17589

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research