Geographic Distance, Income and Charitable Giving : Evidence from China

Using data from a nationwide donation program and a follow-up survey, this paper examines how social distance induced by the geographic distance between donors and recipients and the capability to give measured by donor income affect the amount of charitable giving conditional on giving occurring. We find that an increase in geographic distance significantly reduces donation amount for 15 percent of the donors with very low total monthly disposable income. The sensitivity of donation response to distance decreases with total monthly disposable income level for 62 percent of the donors. We also find that donation amount increases with donor income for 36 percent of the donors when evaluating at sample mean or median distance