8. You shall not steal.

Index Value

Current Value: +0.3029 lives per thousand people.

This index was last updated on October 19, 2003.

Graph

Methodology

Stealing is taking what is not yours. That's the negative component of this commandment. The positive component is giving away what is yours - charitable giving. This commandment is comparatively simple to measure.

Data Sources

The data on charitable giving comes from the Statistics of Income bulletins published by the Internal Revenue Service. It's unfortunate that we don't have figures for the years 1927-1938 and 1947-1955. Those are interesting periods of American history. I performed a simple linear interpolation for the missing years that have data in adjacent years; except for 1940, when there was too big of a jump to interpolate safely.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation publishes information on the number of crimes committed, but I wanted to get some idea of the value of goods and money stolen. I wrote to the Programs Support Division, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation; and they kindly sent me an unpublished table of Estimated Crime Value for the years 1980-2001.

Calculations

This section works through all the adjustments and calculations made, from the original datum through the final index value, so interested readers may follow and verify the methodology used. We will use the year 1986 because it happens to be a high point in the final graph.

Charitable Giving

According to the Internal Revenue Service, the total amount of charitable deductions claimed by all Americans in 1986 was $53,815,979,000. I take all these "raw" dollar values and immediately adjust them for inflation according to the Consumer Price Index. We obtain Year 2000 dollars as follows:

Charitable deductions in year 2000 dollars = $53,815,979,000 * CPI for 2000 / CPI for 1986
= $53,815,979,000 * 250.8 / 167.3 = $80,675,717,000

Jesus makes an observation about charitable giving in Mark 12: 41-43:

The Widow's Offering
Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling His disciples to Him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything - all she had to live on."

In this case Jesus' observation is easy to put into quantitative practice. We need to adjust the given amount by the income of the giver. This makes sense for the morality index - if Americans' real income goes up a lot and we give only a little bit more, the net result is lower morality, not higher. We need to adjust charitable deductions by the Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). According to the Internal Revenue Service, the total AGI for all Americans in 1986 was $2,481,700,000,000. (At this point it's interesting to note that Americans gave 3.25% of our income in 1986 to charitable causes.) Again, we immediately adjust for inflation.

Adjusted Gross Income in Year 2000 dollars = $2,481,700,000,000 * CPI for 2000 / CPI for 1986
= $2,481,700,000,000 * 250.8 / 167.3 = $3,720,324,925,000

Now we adjust the charitable giving in 1986 by AGI, obtaining the charitable giving for 1986 expressed in dollars of year 2000 income. This is the 1986 charitable giving adjusted for inflation and income.

Giving in dollars of Year 2000 income = $80,675,717,000 * AGI for Year 2000 / AGI for Year 1986
= $80,675,717,000 * $6,330,600,000,000 / $3,720,324,925,000 = $137,279,863,000

The next step is to express that dollar amount in terms of lives. We divide the dollar amount by an average American's lifetime earnings ($1,388,000 in 2000).

1986 Charitable giving expressed in lives = $137,279,863,000 / $1,388,000 per life
= 98,905 lives

The final step here is to express charitable giving in lives per thousand people. We divide by the population of the United States in 1986.

1986 Charitable giving in lives per thousand people = 98,905 lives * 1,000 / 1986 population
= 98,905 * 1,000 / 240,132,887 = 0.411875282

This number is the final positive component of the morality index for the Eighth Commandment. If the number looks small, remember that a human life is worth a lot of money. Expressed back in dollars, a thousand Americans gave (0.411875282 * $1,388,000 =) $571,683 in 1986. That's a nice chunk of change.

Note: It turns out that the two inflation adjustments are numerically redundant; we accomplish the same thing by adjusting to year 2000 income. Nevertheless, the policy of adjusting all "raw" dollar amounts for inflation helps establish a consistent pattern of calculation for all Ten Commandments.

Theft

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the total dollar loss for all theft crimes (robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft) in the year 1986 was $12,321,521,680. First we take all these "raw" dollar values and immediately adjust them for inflation according to the Consumer Price Index. We obtain Year 2000 dollars as follows:

Theft in year 2000 dollars = $12,321,521,680 * CPI for 2000 / CPI for 1986
= $12,321,521,680 * 250.8 / 167.3 = $18,471,235,000

It's only fair to adjust theft by income, since we made that same adjustment for charitable giving. Is there a Bible passage to justify making an income adjustment on this side of the equation? Of course there is. See 2 Samuel 12:1-10:

Nathan Rebukes David
The Lord sent [the prophet] Nathan to [King] David. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

"Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared [cooked] it for the one who had come to him."

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."

Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'I annointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in His eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife [Bathsheba] to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised Me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.'"

Nathan's direction to make the income adjustment is not as clear as Jesus' observation, but we can see that King David's actions are even more odious because he took from a man who had so little. Although God hates to see a rich man steal from a poor man, don't forget that all stealing is 100% wrong. (This episode also involves adultery and murder. We'll get to them in the other commandments.)

We adjust the theft in 1986 by Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), obtaining the theft for 1986 expressed in dollars of year 2000 income. This is the 1986 theft adjusted for inflation and income.

Theft in dollars of Year 2000 income = $18,471,235,000 * AGI for Year 2000 / AGI for Year 1986
= $18,471,235,000 * $6,330,600,000,000 / $3,720,324,925,000 = $31,431,125,900

The next step is to express that dollar amount in terms of lives. We divide the dollar amount by an average American's lifetime earnings ($1,388,000 in 2000).

1986 Theft expressed in lives = $31,431,125,900 / $1,388,000 per life
= 22,645 lives

The final step here is to express theft in lives per thousand people. We divide by the population of the United States in 1986.

1986 Theft in lives per thousand people = 22,645 lives * 1,000 / 1986 population
= 22,645 * 1,000 / 240,132,887 = 0.09430155

Composite Index

Now that we have the indexes for charitable giving and theft expressed in the same units, it's a simple matter to add them together to get the final composite index.

1986 Morality Index for Commandment 8 = 1986 Charitable Giving Index - 1986 Theft index
= 0.411875282 - 0.09430155 = 0.3175737

The table below contains the final index values for the Eighth Commandment over several decades. As you can see, the Theft numbers don't kick in until 1980, so we don't really have a valid composite index until that year. However, the positive component is still interesting by itself (see graph at top of page).