NEW YORK Socially responsible mutual funds have grown five times faster than other funds in the past 30 years, according to Pax World Funds.
Socially Responsible Mutual Funds in the United States: A Look Back and Ahead, a report compiled by the Wilmington, Del., company and Thomson Financial/Wiesenbergerld Funds, says that assets managed in the 192 socially and environmentally responsible mutual funds now available grew from $150 million in 1971 to $103 billion last year.
Assets in all mutual funds, by comparison, grew from $50.1 billion to $6.9 trillion. At this pace, socially responsible funds could rise to $278.1 billion by 2011, the report said.
Pax World, the first mutual fund company to screen companies for social and environmental factors, issued the report last week.
