Income Inequality Aversion and Private Charitable Contributions in Korea

We investigated the impact of income inequality aversion on private charitable donations. Income inequality aversion refers to preferences that emphasise concern over income disparities. In a dictator game with several dictators, we found that (1) income inequality aversion increases donations; (2) wealthy individuals weakly donate more than their middle-class counterparts if the degree of income inequality aversion is weakly aligned with income in descending order; and (3) donations decrease as the number of people increases. This theoretical result was empirically tested using data from 10 years of voluntary donations in Korea.