Talk to someone involved in charity fundraising about which causes people in Britain like supporting and the chances are you will hear some good-natured joshing about the country’s enormous love of animals, with donations to look after them often dwarfing those for all sorts of excellent causes involving humans.
I agree with you on the second paragraph - but the amount given to animal charities is actually a very small proportion of all charitable giving - just 6% of all charitable giving in 2011 by amount, compared to 17% for medical research, 16% for religious causes, 11% for children, 10% for each of hospitals and overseas. So overall 94% of charitable giving in the UK is dedicated to humans.
Not quite that stark - eg, hospitals and medical causes will also include kids (children's hospital, leukemia research etc). As I say, the actual divide is 94:6 in favour of 'human' over 'animal' charities.
11% kids and 6% animals.....frankly we should be ashamed of ourselves! That we barely give twice as much to kids charities as animals shows what a strange bunch we can be. I have no problem with pets, they tick a box for some, but seriously!! Compare that to our northern cousins in Scandinavian countries who give four times as much to kids causes and have many, many less social problems because they put humans (clearly) first(that's not the only reason, but a contributing factor)....I am shocked but not surprised though.
