By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

Shelby County residents are among the wealthiest in the state of Alabama, but they are also the most generous in the state with their wealth, according to a recent study completed by the Smartadvisor Match website from Smartasset.com.

The website studied two main factors: how much residents donate as a percentage of their net income and the percentage of people in each county who made charitable donations.

“To determine the amount that people donate as a percentage of their income, we first had to calculate people’s net income. To do this, we looked at tax return data and subtracted total taxes paid, mortgage interest, mortgage points and mortgage insurance payments from total income to get each county’s net income,” read the website. “We then divided each county’s total charitable donations by its total net income to see how much county residents are donating relative to their income.

Next, we took the total number of tax returns with charitable donations and divided them by the number of total tax returns for each county to get the proportion of people in each county who make charitable donations,” the site read. “We then indexed and equally weighted the two factors to yield our most charitable counties score.”

Shelby County came in as the most generous county in the state by a significant margin, as the county posted an average contributions as a percentage of income of 44.7 percent. Nearly 75 percent of Shelby County residents contribute to charities, giving the county a “most charitable counties” index of 70 percent.

Jefferson County came in at No. 2 on the list, with a contributions-to-income percentage of 49.6 percent. About 61 percent of Jefferson County residents contribute to charities, giving the county a 64.7 “most charitable counties” index.

Madison County came in at No. 3, with a contributions-to-income percentage of 35.6 percent. About 58 percent of Madison County residents contribute to charities, giving the county a 54.8 “most charitable counties” index.

To view the entire list, visit https://smartadvisormatch.com/data/most-generous-counties/alabama.