Aid, Development, and Education

Abstract

O ur world faces pervasive poverty and inequality:• the world's rich-poor gap has more than doubled since the 1960s; • 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25/day; • hunger affects 963 million people worldwide; • nearly 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water; • one in three children in developing countries suffers from malnutrition; • about 75 million children who should be in primary school are not; and • every year, nearly 10 million children under the age of 5 die from preventable causes.(Bread for the World, 2009; UNESCO, 2009; Dichter, 2003, p. 1) Hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid have been given or loaned to developing countries though bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, at least, ostensibly, in order to do something about these and other problems.Has such aid helped?Debates around this question have been ongoing for decades, perhaps intensifying in recent years.This should not be a surprise.It is far from straightforward to even determine how to investigate the question.At first glance, a researcher might want to look before and after to observe how well indicators, such as of poverty and economic growth, improved over a specific time period, and link that to changes in aid, controlling for other factors that might affect poverty and economic growth.While some research along these lines exists, this approach is generally a nonstarter, especially on a global level, but also even for specific countries.The question is just too complicated to be well-specified -for many reasons.For instance, there is a myriad of interactive factors that affect poverty and economic growth besides aid.Moreover, international aid serves many purposes other than these, such as supporting the foreign policy of rich countries, building nations, democratization, or fighting terrorism.Given that a supposedly 'scientific' approach cannot answer the question of the impact of aid, it is not surprising that the debates about it rely heavily on anecdotal and idiosyncratic evidence marshaled from particular ideological perspectives.Periodic studies and international meetings have reviewed aid and development linkages and made recommendations for improvement.For example, the World Bank-sponsored Pearson Commission in 1970 argued that "external resources, by adding to the resources available to a developing country, has had a positive impact upon development" and merited "large and sustained expansion" (Asante, 1985, p. 249).Subsequent studies like the Brandt Commission Reports in 1980 and 1983 reinforced these conclusions.In recent years, international meetings -Monterrey in 2002, Rome in 2003, Marrakech in 2004, and Paris in 2005 -led to agreements on aid and development.The G-8 meeting in Scotland in 2005, with impetus from celebrity donors and entrepreneurial philanthropists, promised a doubling of aid to African nations.And perhaps most importantly, the Paris Declaration in 2005 lays out an international agenda to improve foreign aid Watkins, K. (2009, June).Missing the point with Moyo.Norrag News, 42, 19-22.

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