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Foreign aid: Is the U.S. stingy?
By The Christian Science Monitor
Tsunami relief
has put the question on the table. The answer depends on how you run the
numbers.
With a carrier fleet on hand off Sumatra, the United
States seems likely to play its usual role of being the biggest provider of
relief in a major humanitarian disaster.
American giving to help the victims of the Asian tsunamis, so sudden and
captured so dramatically by television, is huge. Washington has pledged $350
million in aid. Moreover, President Bush enlisted two former presidents, Bill
Clinton and his father, George H.W. Bush, to lead a nationwide campaign to raise
private funds -- a move that squares with the president's preference for private
economic activities.
Yet the U.S. aid pledge had been surpassed as of Thursday not only by Japan
($500 million), but by Germany ($674 million) and Australia ($764 million) as
well.
Such efforts have pushed the question of American charity to the forefront. Is
the United States stingy when it comes to foreign aid?
The answer depends on how you measure.
Coming up short per capita
It's a sensitive issue to the Bush administration, which is proud of its
sizable boost in foreign aid with the creation of the Millennium Challenge
Account for poor countries with good economic policies and the President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS relief. Mr. Bush, one aid expert said, undoubtedly
shares in the humanitarian concerns of the evangelical Christian community that
supports him politically.
In terms of traditional foreign aid, the United States gave $16.25 billion in
2003, as measured by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), the club of the world's rich industrial nations. That was almost double
the aid by the next biggest net spender, Japan ($8.8 billion). Other big donors
were France ($7.2 billion) and Germany ($6.8 billion).
But critics point out that the United States is much bigger than those
individual nations. As a group, member nations of the European Union have a bit
larger population than the United States and give a great deal more money in
foreign aid -- $49.2 billion altogether in 2003.
In relation to affluence, the United States lies at the bottom of the list of
rich donor nations. It gave 0.15% of gross national income to official
development assistance in 2003. By this measure, Norway at 0.92% was the most
generous, with Denmark next at 0.84%.
Bring those numbers down to an everyday level and the average American gave 13
cents a day in government aid, according to David Roodman, a researcher at the
Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington. Throw in another nickel a day
from private giving. That private giving is high by international standards, yet
not enough to close the gap with Norway, whose citizens average $1.02 per day in
government aid and 24 cents per day in private aid.
There's aid, and then there's help
But the administration sees that count as too restrictive. Andrew Natsios,
head of the U.S .Agency for International Development, claimed on television
last week that U.S. foreign aid was $24 billion in 2003, up from $10.6 billion
when President Clinton took office. Some experts say that number, bigger than
the OECD count, is a bit mysterious. It probably includes some debt forgiveness,
such as $1 billion for the Congo. Last month, the United States forgave $4
billion in Iraqi debt, which may get counted in 2004 numbers for foreign aid.
The purpose of much foreign aid is to reduce poverty and encourage progress in
developing nations. Toward that end, Roodman's CGD has attempted to capture
other policies to construct a Commitment to Development Index for 21 rich
nations. Here the United States comes in much better, at No. 7. The index
considers trade policy, foreign investment, immigration, environmental policy,
technology, and security (some military assistance), as well as official and
private aid in ranking the generosity of nations.
The United States, for instance, has relatively open borders to exports from
poor countries. Its agriculture is less protected than that of Europe or Japan.
It lets in 1 million or so immigrants a year, mostly from Mexico and other poor
nations. They remit tens of billions home.
Moreover, the United States has a huge defense budget, some of which benefits
developing countries. Making a judgment call, the CGD includes the cost of UN
peacekeeping activities and other military assistance approved by a multilateral
institution, such as NATO. So the United States gets credit for its spending in
Kosovo, Australia for its intervention in East Timor, and Britain for military
money spent to bring more stability to Sierra Leone.
Then there's the question of balance.
Some aid experts worry that American giving to alleviate the tsunami disaster
will prove out of proportion compared with other needs around the world.
For example, some 240,000 people a month (1,776 in rich countries) die of
HIV/AIDS, another 136,000 a month from diarrhea in developing countries, notes
Roodman. Famine kills far more people than the 150,000 plus who died in the
tsunamis.
The United States often helps battle these more endemic challenges too. But
politics can intrude. Motives are sometimes mixed. Assistance to famine in
Ethiopia or elsewhere can be a big boost to American farmers.
"Not to belittle what we are doing, we shouldn't get too
self-congratulatory," says Frederick Barton, an economist at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Posted on www.msn.com
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