The Zig Zag

Stingy or Whingy?

Jan Egeland, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, recently criticized the U.S. commitment to the tsunami disaster as “stingy”. This whinge is probably based more on a manufactured perception that the US is not very generous when it comes to aid.

So is it? The table often used to back up this assertion is official aid as a % of GNI/GDP drawn up by the OECD and this does show that the US is the “stingiest” donor in the developed world. However once private aid flows are added, the US looks decidedly average in terms of generosity, as the figure above shows. There are obviously big questions about what “private” aid flows actually are and the OECD figures and definitions seem to me to be rather opaque. For instance, looking at the size of some of the figures, I don't think that they incorporate large donations such as the Bill and Melissa Gates foundation’s 30 billion. Nonetheless, last year 14 billion out of the total of 30 billion of private aid came from the US. Thus despite constituting about a quarter of the world's economy, the US contributed about half of the worlds private development funds. Similarly when we look at private NGO aid flows (shown below), the US is clearly an above average donor.

So overall it seems that while the US is a stingy "official donor" , its a generous private donor making it an average donor overall. So why is the stingy myth so prevalent? Probably because Mr Egeland's wage is paid from official not private aid and so he needs to make sure that the world keeps giving.

data is from the OECD 3 and a more roust defense of the US record is here.