Disaster relief donations: Stretching your donation dollar
Donations toward disaster relief following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan are much lower so far than they have been for recent, comparable catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti and Hurricane Katrina. According to CNN, four-day donation totals for Japanese relief are approximately $25 million, compared to $150 million for Haiti and $108 for Hurricane Katrina. Several explanations have been offered for this, including so-called “disaster fatigue,” where people who would ordinarily give feel tapped out from all of the major disasters that have happened around the world in the last few years. The CNN article also provides other hypotheses...
