Overseas Development Aid

[Warrigal]

All but the poorest countries set aside some of their wealth for overseas aid. Some of that aid goes to disaster relief for earthquakes, famines, refugee camps and so on but one important aspect of foreign aid is money allocated for development in third world countries.

Development aid is important because it contributes to good governance and thus to peace in the countries being helped.

This is a list of development aid contributions by country or country block for 2015.

European Union – $87.64 billion[SUP][3][/SUP]

1. United States – $31.08 billion
2. United Kingdom – $18.70 billion
3. Germany – $17.78 billion
4. Japan – $9.32 billion
5. France – $9.23 billion
6. Sweden – $7.09 billion
7. Netherlands – $5.81 billion
8. Canada – $4.29 billion
9. Norway – $4.28 billion
10. Italy – $3.84 billion
11. Switzerland – $3.54 billion
12. Australia – $3.22 billion
13. Denmark – $2.57 billion
14. South Korea – $1.91 billion
15. Belgium – $1.89 billion
16. Spain – $1.60 billion
17. Finland – $1.29 billion
18. Austria – $1.21 billion
19. Ireland – $0.72 billion
20. Poland – $0.44 billion
21. New Zealand – $0.44 billion
22. Luxembourg – $0.36 billion
23. Portugal – $0.31 billion
24. Greece – $0.28 billion
25. Czech Republic – $0.20 billion
    
    Looking at it another way, this is the same list ranked by percentage of gross national income
    
    

1. Sweden – 1.40%
2. Norway – 1.05%
3. Luxembourg – 0.93%
4. Denmark – 0.85%
5. Netherlands – 0.76%
6. United Kingdom – 0.71%
7. Finland – 0.56%
8. Switzerland – 0.52%
9. Germany – 0.52%
10. Belgium – 0.42%
11. France – 0.37%
12. Ireland – 0.36%
13. Austria – 0.32%
14. Canada – 0.28%
15. New Zealand – 0.27%
16. Australia – 0.27%
17. Iceland – 0.24%
18. Japan – 0.22%
19. Italy – 0.21%
20. United States – 0.17%
21. Portugal – 0.16%
22. Slovenia – 0.15%
23. Greece – 0.14%
24. South Korea – 0.14%
25. Spain – 0.13%

Australia drops from 12 to 16, US from 1 to 20 and Canada 8 to 14. New Zealand goes in the other direction, up from 21 to 15.

Make of that what you will.
These figures are government and government agencies only - no private donations - and do not include military expeditionary expenditure.

 

[Carla]

That's a lot of dough! You would think with all that, there wouldn't be so much poverty in the world. I've never seen that list before, thanks for posting.

 

[Warrigal]

A lot of people are being lifted out of poverty as a result of development aid.

I forgot to give the reference. Here it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors

I also found a list of recipient countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_aid_recipients

 

[Manatee]

A lot of third world politicians get rich from foreign aid.

 

[Grumpy Ol' Man]

I was wondering where Russia, India, China, etc. were. There are just 28 countries in the OECD organization. So, some who are not also contribute to assistance of underdeveloped countries. Some of those are...
Non-DAC members reported the following figures to the OECD in 2015:[SUP][1][/SUP]

• 
  United Arab Emirates – $4.39 billion
• 
  Turkey – $3.91 billion
• 
  Russia – $1.14 billion
• 
  Israel – $0.21 billion
• 
  Hungary – $0.15 billion
• 
  Croatia – $0.05 billion
• 
  Lithuania – $0.04 billion
• 
  Estonia – $0.03 billion
• 
  Latvia – $0.02 billion
• 
  Malta – $0.01 billion

Notes:

• 
  India, which had a foreign aid budget of $1.6 billion in 2015-6,[SUP][4][/SUP] does not submit figures to the OECD.

Russia and India are way down the list if they were compared to some of the other, smaller economies. Nothing reported for China. Where are all the South American countries? Some of those have pretty large economies, even though many of their citizens live in poverty. Mexico?? Lots of manufacturing, etc.
I still believe we are a pretty "giving" global society. Few natural disasters happen that don't see aid from other countries flowing in. How will this work when Trump is President and he wants each and every benefactor of American dollars to pay them back... or not receive aid?