The true cost and results of U.S. foreign aid

The United States should spend more money on non-military foreign aid...here’s my case.

#1-People don’t really know how much the U.S. spends.  How much of the U.S. budget is dedicated to foreign aid?  If you are like the average respondent of a 2014 poll, you replied 26%.  The actual number in 2014 was less than 1%.  Unclear definitions of foreign aid may account for some of the misperception, but when respondents were given the true number their evaluation of U.S. policy changed.  The results suggest that if leaders more accurately represented the true amount of money spent on non-military foreign aid the public may be more receptive to increased spending.

#2-Cutting non-military spending on foreign aid would not significantly affect the U.S. deficit.  Politicians often talk about foreign aid as a way to cut spending and control the deficit.  Most recently, President Trump’s budget proposal in February of this year cut foreign aid using this logic but there have been many before him.  Americans generally are reluctant to cut spending on government programs but one study found that foreign aid was the most popular program to cut out of 13 options, and even at that only 28% said they wanted to cut foreign aid.  The U.S. deficit in 2019 was $984 billion.  Total foreign aid spending was $39.3 billion, or 3.99%.  So if you cut all of foreign aid, you would still have a deficit of $944.7 billion.  There may be other arguments to cutting foreign aid but the deficit ain’t one of them.

#3-Foreign aid advances the national interests of the U.S.  For one thing, recipients of U.S. foreign aid are more likely to vote with the U.S. on important issues at the U.N.  The Marshall Plan, perhaps the most successful example of foreign aid at work, helped Europe recover after World War II resulting in strong, democratic allies as the Cold War began.  The economic recovery of Western Europe also led to a post-war boom in the U.S. as trade accelerated between the U.S. and Europe.  The argument is also often made that foreign aid helps stabilize countries, preventing civil conflict that may spill over causing humanitarian crises or creating unstable states that become havens for terrorism.  While research suggests this relationship is a little more complicated, it does show that under the right circumstances foreign aid does have security benefits for the U.S.  Foreign aid provides the U.S. with greater influence at the U.N., economic benefits as well as security benefits.

#4-Foreign aid saves a lot of lives for a relatively small amount of money.  Everyone learns about the Marshall Plan but a more recent example of a successful foreign aid program is PEPFAR.  You can go here to read a longer description, but the program was initially started in 2003 by President Bush (with advice from Dr. Fauci) to reduce the spread and effects of HIV in Africa.  From 2003 to 2019 the program cost $90 billion.  As a point of comparison, in 2003 total U.S. spending was $2.16 trillion.  What did PEPFAR achieve for its $90 billion?  According to one study looking at 2007-2010, it prevented 1.2 million deaths and decreased the AIDS mortality rate by 10.5%.  If you look at the 17 years from 2003-2020 that would extrapolate to around 5 million lives saved.  In addition, as of 2019, it prevented 2.6 million babies from being born with HIV and provided care for 6.3 million orphans.  It has also made President Bush the most popular U.S. president in Africa.  So for roughly the cost of one ICBM, PEPFAR saved millions of people and provided medical care and education for millions of others.  While PEPFAR is the most successful program, there are several other humanitarian programs that save lives and are cost effective.

Based on the evidence increasing U.S. foreign aid would advance U.S. national interests and provide humanitarian relief while not really costing the U.S. all that much.  The reality is obviously much more complicated and how the foreign aid is spent matters a great deal.  Foreign aid provided to NGOs and directly to individuals is generally more effective than aid given directly to governments. With these qualifications in mind, increasing U.S. foreign aid seems like a no-brainer.