May 22, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Bread for the World Institute, an antipoverty group in Washington, is questioning the conclusions of a new report by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity.
The Hudson report points out that while the American government is criticized for contributing less than 0.2 percent of gross national income to the development of impoverished nations, private sources of aid — philanthropy, investment capital, and money sent from American workers to their families abroad — far outstrips that of official assistance from the U.S. government.
But on Bread for the World’s blog, Charles Uphaus, the group’s senior foreign-assistance policy analyst, wonders if this is “legitimate accounting.”
Remittances are mostly spent on consumer goods, and investors put down financial stakes only in countries with a stable government, which are not the ones that need help, he writes.
And philanthropy, while an important player, often “is in the form of limited, short-term projects that don’t sum to a larger whole and, in the process, sap host country management resources and complicate the task of donor harmonization.”
Indeed, according to a Chronicle article, international aid groups argue that American foreign aid requires a major overhaul.
What do you think of the Hudson report? Does it compare apples to oranges, as Mr. Uphaus says? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.
