A Half Penny on the Federal Dollar: The Future of Development Aid

Michael E. O&#039;Hanlon; Carol L. Graham

doi:10.5771/9780815705208

Summary

Spending on U.S. foreign affairs, which constitutes only about one percent of the federal budget, is being sharply reduced. Under the President's 1996 budget plan, it will decline by just as great a percentage as defense between 1990 and 2002and by substantially more than defense over the 1980-2002 period. No other major category of federal spending will undergo a real cut over either time period. The shrinking budget, totaling about $19 billion in 1997, will still have to fund the State Department, international broadcasting and educational exchanges, trade subsidies and investment guarantees for U.S. business overseas; United Nations operations including peacekeeping, and all types of foreign assistance.

In this book, O'Hanlon and Graham focus primarily on this last component of international spending. Specifically, they analyze U.S. official development assistance (ODA) to poor countries. The authors place U.S. ODA in a broad historical, international, and economic perspective. They then recommend an alternative approach to ODA for the United States as well as other donors. They favor continuing to provide humanitarian and grass-roots aid to most poor countries, but providing ODA to promote macroeconomic growth only to those countries that maintain coherent, market-oriented economic policy frameworks. The authors argue that to provide effective aid, as well as to maintain U.S. leadership in world affairs, net resources for ODA and the international account need to increase only modestly.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2010
Copyright year: 2010
ISBN-Print: 978-0-8157-6445-8
ISBN-Online: 978-0-8157-0520-8
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 102
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
1. What Is Development Aid? No access
2. Why Is This Subject Important? No access
1. The U.S. International Affairs Budget No access
2. U.S. Official Development Assistance No access
3. U.S. Assistance in International Perspective No access
4. Uses and Effects of Development Assistance No access
1. Most Development Aid Should Focus on Promoting Growth No access
2. The "Conditionally" Paradigm No access
3. Does Aid Tend to Lead to Economic Growth? No access
4. Reevaluating Conditionality No access
5. The Chicken or the Egg: Do Policies or Initial Conditions Determine Economic Performance? No access
6. Implications for Future Assistance No access
1. Aid for Grass-Roots and Humanitarian Purposes No access
2. Aid for General Economic Development and Nationwide Programs No access
3. Debt Relief No access
4. Reconstructing Societies Ravaged by Conflict No access
5. Environmental Programs No access
6. Social Safety Nets No access
7. Summary No access
1. How Many Countries Should Get More Aid, and How Many, Less? No access
2. Desirable Global Aid Levels No access
3. The U.S. Foreign Assistance and International Affairs Budgets No access
4. Other Reforms in Existing Aid Approaches No access
1. Budget Implications No access
2. Aid Selectivity No access
3. Aid and America's Role in the World No access
Notes No access Pages 88 - 98
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4. D No access
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6. F No access
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12. L No access
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