A recent NPR broadcast entitled "Disaster Aid Donations Remain Steady" caught our attention when it was aired on October 18, 2005. The story gives a great overview analysis about the true state of "compassion fatigue" stemming from the surprising number of natural catastrophes that have befallen our planet this year. Rather than defaulting to the current conventional wisdom that charitable giving has dropped off significantly, this story goes deeper and actually makes some significant distinctions in order to compare recent events in context.
The story makes a distinction between giving to "slow moving disasters" (such as AIDS, malaria, and famine), which have always been difficult to raise money for, and "rapidly occurring events" (such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis), which get donations from people based upon the "this could happen to me" principle.
The story further distinguishes between different "rapidly occurring events" to conclude that not all "rapidly occurring events" are created equal. For example, it points out that the Asian tsunami, which had deaths tolls over 250,000, occurred the day after Christmas when people were home with their families watching the events unfold on TV. Hurricane Katrina, as a domestic disaster, naturally received more support from the U.S. than an international disaster simply because it happened at home.
To find an actual apples-to-apples comparison, the story looks back to the 2003 earthquake in Iran and the more recent earthquake in Pakistan. In comparing the responses to those two events, the story reports that there has actually been an increase in giving. The report thus concludes that generosity and compassion have not yet waned as much as many people believe.
