Socioeconomic implications of donation distributions

Individual donation depends on personal wealth and individual willingness to donate. On the basis of a donation model proposed in our previous study, a simplified version of an individual donation model is derived by relaxing the restrictions of the maximum wealth in the economy. Thus, the whole distribution is determined by only two parameters. One of them relates to the exponent of the distribution of society wealth and the other refers to the donation amount of the kindest poorest person. The parameters reflect the degree of wealth inequality and the charitable enthusiasm of society, respectively. Using actual donation data, we develop a specific parameter estimation method combining linear regression and the Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) statistic to get the value of two socioeconomic indicators. Applications to Chinese individual donations in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake indicate a rising inequality in social wealth distribution in China. Also, more charitable enthusiasm is observed in the response to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.