I’d like to see a question on the best level of aid to the Third World (say, an estimated optimum as a fraction of GDP in affluent Western countries). The current level is nonzero but rather low (especially if you exclude things like military aid to allies); some people say it’s scandalously low, others that such aid is actively harmful and the level should therefore be zero or very close. (I assume plenty of people also say that the level should be zero because someone in the US has no obligations to someone in sub-saharan Africa, but that opinion isn’t expressed so often in public.)
It seems a bit transparent to me that there’s no such thing as a “best level of aid to the Third World”. That’s asking “How much money do you have to throw at the problem to stop feeling guilty?” There are only marginal efficiencies which determine how much resources you would want to flow in that direction. In the case of Africa, African economists are pleading with us to stop the aid because it’s destroying their continent. I don’t know about the rest of the Third World. In any case it has to go project by project.
1. A question posed simply in terms of “the best level” would be measuring some sort of tangled-up combination of respondents’ values and their opinions about facts. That might be a bad thing (though I note that the question about political affiliation, at least, has the same feature). Instead, one could ask something like “what level of aid do you think would maximize Africa’s GDP after 20 years?” or “what level of aid do you think would maximize average expected QALYs at birth over the whole human population”.
2. When considering an individual’s charitable activity, of course we should think in terms of marginal efficiencies. That’s not so clear when considering the question of the total amount of aid that might go from the affluent West to the Third World.
3. You mean (unless you have relevant information I don’t, which is eminently possible) that some African economists are saying that the aid is harmful. It would be much more interesting to know typical African economists’ opinions. If nothing else, there is obvious sampling bias here: if two African economists approach an American publisher, one proposing to write a book saying “Aid is actively harmful; stop it now” and one proposing to write one saying “Aid is useful; please do a bit more of it”, which one is going to get the contract? It seems to me that there are multiple different factors making it far more likely to be the first one that have scarcely any correlation with the actual truth of the matter.
4. Yes, of course, actual decisions need to be made project by project. That doesn’t mean that one can’t hold an opinion about the approximate gross amount of aid there should be. (Such as, for instance, “none”, which is an opinion you don’t seem to object to even though it’s the ultimate in not-project-by-project answers since it necessarily returns the same answer for every project.)
AIUI, It matters immensely what type of aid you’re talking about, the processes by which it is distributed, anti-corruption mechanisms etc. Giving away food grown in Western countries is disastrous, microcredit, vaccinations, educating women etc. not so much. In any case I took the question to be trying to ascertain community positions on distributive justice issues and Western obligations to the developing world rather than distributive efficiency. So if there is really a widespread sense a question about aid wouldn’t reflect those sorts of positions maybe a more theoretical question would be better.
Implicit in the question is the idea that aiding the third world costs money. The World Bank claims that America’s three billion a year subsidy to its own cotton farmers has knock on effects that make African cotton farmers three hundred million dollars a year worse off. But the American subsidy is a very wasteful internal transfer. If America wants to give African cotton farmers three hundred million dollars in aid, it need only scrap its subsidy at a net benefit to America of perhaps two billion dollars.
Notice that I’m saying something different from “aid is actively harmful”. I’m saying that we haven’t plucked the low hanging fruit of passive win/win where we stop doing dumb shit and every nation is better off. After that comes active win/win such as building harbours and roads that increase the value of African products by making it cheaper to transport them to First World markets (win for Africans) while making African products more available to First World markets (win for First World). Mobile phones have reduced Third World poverty by letting farmers and fishermen direct their produce to the best markets, even while the mobile phone operators have profited by providing services. Fostering a zero-sum mentality with questions that assume that aiding the Third World costs the same amount of money as the benefit provided is misleading.
Indeed, in the ‘most important world saving causes’ list earlier, ending agricultural subsidies wasn’t even mentioned but that would probably be top of my list (battling with greatly relaxing immigration restrictions for the top spot).
Have people answer two ways:
1) assume essentially no change in the type and quality of projects funded
2) assume some wise politicians make some realistic improvements in transparency, and accountability. The equivalent of No Child Left Behind for foreign aid.
Rather than argue over whether such a thing is possible I think that assuming the aid would be spent on whatever would do the most good would be the least convenient posisble world, and the one that gives us the opinion we’re after here. Together with the opinion on the realistic case this tells us both what we think of the concept of aid if it works and what we think of it in practice.
I’d like to see a question on the best level of aid to the Third World (say, an estimated optimum as a fraction of GDP in affluent Western countries). The current level is nonzero but rather low (especially if you exclude things like military aid to allies); some people say it’s scandalously low, others that such aid is actively harmful and the level should therefore be zero or very close. (I assume plenty of people also say that the level should be zero because someone in the US has no obligations to someone in sub-saharan Africa, but that opinion isn’t expressed so often in public.)
It seems a bit transparent to me that there’s no such thing as a “best level of aid to the Third World”. That’s asking “How much money do you have to throw at the problem to stop feeling guilty?” There are only marginal efficiencies which determine how much resources you would want to flow in that direction. In the case of Africa, African economists are pleading with us to stop the aid because it’s destroying their continent. I don’t know about the rest of the Third World. In any case it has to go project by project.
1. A question posed simply in terms of “the best level” would be measuring some sort of tangled-up combination of respondents’ values and their opinions about facts. That might be a bad thing (though I note that the question about political affiliation, at least, has the same feature). Instead, one could ask something like “what level of aid do you think would maximize Africa’s GDP after 20 years?” or “what level of aid do you think would maximize average expected QALYs at birth over the whole human population”.
2. When considering an individual’s charitable activity, of course we should think in terms of marginal efficiencies. That’s not so clear when considering the question of the total amount of aid that might go from the affluent West to the Third World.
3. You mean (unless you have relevant information I don’t, which is eminently possible) that some African economists are saying that the aid is harmful. It would be much more interesting to know typical African economists’ opinions. If nothing else, there is obvious sampling bias here: if two African economists approach an American publisher, one proposing to write a book saying “Aid is actively harmful; stop it now” and one proposing to write one saying “Aid is useful; please do a bit more of it”, which one is going to get the contract? It seems to me that there are multiple different factors making it far more likely to be the first one that have scarcely any correlation with the actual truth of the matter.
4. Yes, of course, actual decisions need to be made project by project. That doesn’t mean that one can’t hold an opinion about the approximate gross amount of aid there should be. (Such as, for instance, “none”, which is an opinion you don’t seem to object to even though it’s the ultimate in not-project-by-project answers since it necessarily returns the same answer for every project.)
How would everyone feel about a question phrased something like:
“True or false: the marginal effect of extra money being given to aid in Africa through a charity like UNICEF is generally positive.”
AIUI, It matters immensely what type of aid you’re talking about, the processes by which it is distributed, anti-corruption mechanisms etc. Giving away food grown in Western countries is disastrous, microcredit, vaccinations, educating women etc. not so much. In any case I took the question to be trying to ascertain community positions on distributive justice issues and Western obligations to the developing world rather than distributive efficiency. So if there is really a widespread sense a question about aid wouldn’t reflect those sorts of positions maybe a more theoretical question would be better.
Implicit in the question is the idea that aiding the third world costs money. The World Bank claims that America’s three billion a year subsidy to its own cotton farmers has knock on effects that make African cotton farmers three hundred million dollars a year worse off. But the American subsidy is a very wasteful internal transfer. If America wants to give African cotton farmers three hundred million dollars in aid, it need only scrap its subsidy at a net benefit to America of perhaps two billion dollars.
Notice that I’m saying something different from “aid is actively harmful”. I’m saying that we haven’t plucked the low hanging fruit of passive win/win where we stop doing dumb shit and every nation is better off. After that comes active win/win such as building harbours and roads that increase the value of African products by making it cheaper to transport them to First World markets (win for Africans) while making African products more available to First World markets (win for First World). Mobile phones have reduced Third World poverty by letting farmers and fishermen direct their produce to the best markets, even while the mobile phone operators have profited by providing services. Fostering a zero-sum mentality with questions that assume that aiding the Third World costs the same amount of money as the benefit provided is misleading.
Indeed, in the ‘most important world saving causes’ list earlier, ending agricultural subsidies wasn’t even mentioned but that would probably be top of my list (battling with greatly relaxing immigration restrictions for the top spot).
Have people answer two ways: 1) assume essentially no change in the type and quality of projects funded 2) assume some wise politicians make some realistic improvements in transparency, and accountability. The equivalent of No Child Left Behind for foreign aid.
Rather than argue over whether such a thing is possible I think that assuming the aid would be spent on whatever would do the most good would be the least convenient posisble world, and the one that gives us the opinion we’re after here. Together with the opinion on the realistic case this tells us both what we think of the concept of aid if it works and what we think of it in practice.
Why not just assume magical space fairies come down to earth and solve poverty? It’s a more realistic expectation.
“Why not just assume magical space fairies come down to earth and solve poverty? It’s a more realistic expectation.”
Right, like with the No Child Left Behind system, “still waiting for the magical space fairies to wisely make schools accountable since 2001.”