It depends on your definition of homeless.

The US has a pretty high number of homeless but most are classfied as "Transitional homeless"  IE they are homeless for less then 3 months in a year.

So that's a factor.

Then you have to consider if you count people who are homeless who are in shelters as homeless or not... etc.  Or people in Transitional shelters... etc.

The "Total" number is 1.6 Million in one year... and about 664,000 as the maxium amount in one night over the course of that year but that includes a lot of situations that wouldn't count as homeless in other countries.  125,000 of that 664,000 were considered "Chronic Homeless" which is people who were homeless for more then 2-3 months in a given year.

One thing America has over most other countries is that we err on the side of caution in are statistics.

It's why our Infant mortality rate is so high.  We count more children as infants... while other countries have height and weight requirements before they consider a child a live birth... even if he was birthed alive!

Still, aren't conservative religious people more likely to be opposed to social programs, public education, public healthcare etc.?

i am an strong believer in helping your own before helping others or else you end up getting into an real sticky situation where you are walk among your neighbors suffering while you have given your excess wealth to another person in other location which effects would mean that while yes they will be supported and yes you will feel better but you will have to put up with looking in despair as your own fellow country men live in hardship every single day.

If you are american i say there is absolutely no harm in giving to other americans because you are in an real ugly situation and if you dont you are going to get what some countries in other parts of the world have when they have mass poor.

I live in Australia and while i may be called racist or an evil person in which i dont care but i am against foreign aid and accepting immigrates who aren't really needed when we have 10s of thousands of homeless and even more going hungry. If they were to help those people then once thats all done sure help another country out. Because you know what, they will most likely not do the same for your country and help there own people right away so they dont end up were they were once before.

Yep... by conservative that's exactly what they mean... Conservative when it comes to economic issues.

Makes sense when you think about it.

Those who donate more to charity are those who think it's the average person's job to help each other... and that government does a poor job with the money it earmarks for charities.

Those who donate less, or not at all think it's the governments job to deal with the poor.

One amusing case is Al Gore vs George Bush.  Al Gore is the Pro social programs + Green candidate.... yet when he ran... his tax returns showed he donated basically nothing to charity... and I believed used his "Lobbying" as the excuse for that...  and his house took up all kinds of electrictiy.

While Bush donated a lot to charity... and his house is powered by Geothermal energy.

In Gore's defense he does donate more to charity now, like his peace prize money... of course he makes a whole lot more too... so who knows how much it is in relative to his carbon credit buisness.

Your thinking American Conservatives are representatives of Conservatives around the globe. It even recently came up in the Canadian election rumours started that Prime Minister Harper would cut many health care programs. However he quickly denied it as it upset the majority of his supporters. Now whether their was any truth to the rumour I don't know. But the Conservative Party was very quick to deny it had any intentions on cutting Health Care.

Infac the Liberal Party of Canada cut way more social programs then the Conservatives have ever. I know because I was in foster care and on financial support for awhile. It wasn't the Conservatives threatening to cut the programs I was in it was the Liberals.

I'm pretty sure Conservatives in Europe are likely also different then Conservatives in the United States. To link Conservative to religion is also pretty bad as I know many non-religious Conservatives. In Canada we have three main parties the Liberals (Center) NDP (Extreme Left) and Conservatives (Middle to Right).

Fact is you can't assume just because the American Republican Party supports certain measures that all Conservatives do. Just look at Australia their Conservatives have done all kinds of shit that Canada's Conservatives wouldn't do and not even America's.

Also you do realize that many of the hospital's were created with the help of religious groups. Catholics were very instrumental in the building of many hospitals here and abroad. Also while the Catholic school system is horrible it was also the main education system until the Government stepped in at least here.

Religious people are the ones who started many of the social programs we see today not the other way around!

Conservatives in the West generally oppose anything that may be seen as "Socialism", and social programs fit in this category.

I haven't read any studies on this myself, but I would mostly attribute that to religious people having a communal purpose. A sense of community and peer pressure would be hugely contributing factors, I would imagine. It'd be interesting to see a study of faithful, non-church going people and faithful, church going people (I think we may have had this conversation before, maybe? Neither could find any results).

I would also imagine that the conservative-to-charity correlation to be weaker and mostly only even so closely correlated becuase of the correlation between conservatism and religiosity (as opposed to liberals).

I'm basing this all on presupposition, though. Let me know if I'm incorrect here. I'm not basing this on facts of any sort.

The conservative correlation is weaker... however still is significant from what i remember.

A really religious Conservative is still going to give more then a really religious liberal.

Afterall, studies that study both do make sure to weed out the correlation between the two before saying both are significant.

Curious to think why there is a difference between an religious liberal and a conservative on average.

A few things that come immediately to mind are:

• A belief in that they support more governmental intervention (though not actual charity, but it may perhaps be a reason why)
• A larger percentage live in cities - being far less communal in nature to more rural areas. In effect, there would perhaps be less group pressure
• A matter of demographics. With liberals being younger, on average, and hence less financially stable to afford acts of charity monetarily
• They're jerks

Does that study (do you still have access to it?) posit any suggestions? Would definitely be an interesting read.

Not off hand.  If I remember i'll look for it when I have an off day.  Been pretty busy lately.

As for living in cities.... i'd expect to give more in a city honesty because that's where you actually see homeless and poor people more often.

As for demographics.  I'm not sure.  While Liberals are younger on average.  They also are supposed to make more money on average. 

The only group that is more educated and makes more money then Liberals is Libretarians.