The Privatization of Foreign Aid

Reassessing National Largesse

Bibliographic Data

ID3289944
AuthorsCarol C Adelman, Carol Adelman (corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume82
Issue6
Pages9
Publication date2003-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueForeign Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-7120 • E-ISSN: 2327-7793
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/20033752
OpenAlexW2540303057
LanguageEN
Citations received15

Foreign aid has returned to the center of U.S. foreign policy. In the decade after World War II, U.S. government dollars helped rebuild Europe and Asia and con tain Soviet influence. In the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, aid helped newly democratic states recover from the miseries of communism. Today, a third wave of foreign aid is starting to foster de velopment and democracy, particularly in the Middle East, and to stem the onset of pandemics in the developing world. But even as Washington reemphasizes the importance of aid, critics, from journal ists and academics to former presidents, ritually blast the United States for being stingy. President George W. Bush's pledge to increase aid so percent by 2oo6-the biggest boost since the Marshall Plan was launched in 1948-and new legislation de voting an additional $1S billion to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria have done little to stave off such attacks. Critics noting that the United States, despite giving the greatest absolute amount, comes in last among industrialized nations in terms of aid as a percentage of national income-have tagged it the most miserly of nations. What such criticism fails to take into account is the new landscape of foreign aid. Current measures of a nation's largesse only count funds doled out by the government, thus ignoring the primary way in which Americans help others abroad: through the private sector. In the last decade, U.S. government aid has been far outstripped by private donations-from foundations, private voluntary organizations (Pvos), corpora tions, universities, religious groups, and individuals giving directly to needy family members abroad. There is no compre hensive measure of how much Americans donate overseas, but a conservative esti mate, based on surveys and voluntary reporting, puts annual private giving around $35 billion. Even this low-ball figure is more than three and a half times the amount of official development as sistance (ODA) given out in a year by the U.S. government. In the third wave

Business · Development economics · Economics · International trade · Political economy · Political science · International Development and Aid

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