World Giving Index published

A survey has found the UK is the fourth most generous nation in the world.

It shares joint fourth place with Ireland in the latest World Giving Index.

Mynamar is ranked first.

The Gallup survey, commissioned by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), ranked 135 nations in terms of giving money, giving time, and helping a stranger.

Just over three in five people in the UK said they had helped a stranger in the previous month, down 4% on the year before, while 74% said they had given money to charity – also slightly down.

The United States was the only nation to appear in the top 10 for all three measures and it topped the rankings for being most likely to help a stranger - 79% said they had done so in the previous month.

Iraq and Trinidad and Tobago were the countries joint second-most likely to help a stranger, with 75% of respondents in those places saying they had done so.

Malaysia recorded the biggest increase in generosity, a change CAF attributed to the humanitarian effort made towards its Philippine neighbours whose lives were devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013. Malaysia jumped from 71st to seventh in the Index as participation in all three behaviours increased substantially.

Overall, combining the three indicators of generosity, the US and Myanmar were the two most generous nations, followed by Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand. Yemen was bottom with Venezuela just above.

In developed countries women are more likely to give to charity; in low-income nations men are more likely to donate.

Around the world, fewer people aged 15 to 29 are donating, possibly due to high youth unemployment which continues to afflict the global economy.

The data is gathered through the completion in most of the 135 countries of 1,000 questionnaires by a representative sample of their populations. In total 130,000 people were interviewed by Gallup in 2013.