Global Development: Views from the Center

I echo the desire that our politicians would value this, but it doesn't seem surprising. People love celebrities who give back because these are very rich people giving their own money (or time) to help the poor internationally. It doesn't surprise me that people are less excited about politicians giving public money (which could alternatively be spent on some domestic program) to help the poor internationally. Of course, it's true that development matters for us, but the impacts are less direct than with domestic spending, so of course people will be less psyched about someone spending "their" money than Oprah or Angelina spending her own (massive amounts of) money.

Is there any recent public polling to test your (very plausible) hypothesis that public support for aid funding is increasing? If not, what would it take to get that done? If the pollsters prove it, aren't the lawmakers more likely to act?

If we’re curious what “real Americans” think about development issues, we should probably start by asking. The Program on International Policy Attitudes does this every few years, querying people on various foreign aid issues. In mid-2005, they polled Americans on a number of questions related to the Millennium Development Goals, including the following: “Assuming the cost [of achieving the MDGs] would be an average of $50 a year per taxpaying household in the wealthy countries and the other countries were willing to give this much, do you think the US should or should not be willing to do so as well?” The $50 per household figure represents the “high-end” estimate of additional money needed to accomplish the MDGs – essentially a doubling of total aid flows. In response to the question, 70% of those polled answered in the affirmative, with little difference between Democrats and Republicans. Evidence of a broad-based, pro-development assistance mandate…right?

Actually, 70% is surprisingly low. If anything, the results of this survey question suffer from significant upward bias. Respondents were not asked if they themselves were prepared to personally hand over $50 right there and then; they were asked if the (impersonal) U.S. should do so (presumably at some discounted future time). Then there’s the caveat requiring that other rich countries are also willing contributors – eliminating the “undo burden” argument sometimes voiced by (uninformed) opponents of foreign aid. Finally, people invariably think of the $50 as part of their household’s charitable giving “budget line” rather than a tax increase handed down by Washington; the former obviously generates much more pleasure than the latter. And the more pleasure a hypothetical situation generates, the more generous the survey response.

Given all this, 70% seems a pretty paltry figure. Is it so hard to believe that the true figure is less than 50%? I’m not suggesting that there isn’t an increasingly strong development alliance across various interests, and I agree that strong political leadership on the issue is missing and sorely needed. But I’m not convinced that politicians are simply ignoring the views of Americans. To be sure, Oprah, fashion shoots, and (PRODUCT) RED are popular and helpful, but could their popularity suffer from the same biases as the survey question? Do they ask people to make tangible sacrifices for something beyond themselves, or do they provide an extra bit of pleasure to activities that people would undertake anyway? Maybe I'm wrong -- I sure hope so.

The Kaiser Family Foundation polled the American public last year and asked who they considered to be leaders in the fight against AIDS. They read a list of names and George Bush hardly got any credit. 50% of those polled said Bono and Bill Clinton were leaders followed by Nelson Mandela at 47%. Bush got 25%, just slightly more than Kofi Annan at 23% http://www.kff.org/spotlight/hivglobal/6.cfm

The constituency for global poverty programs is small, and I doubt that many voters would turf out their politicians over aid to foreigners. Fortunately, groups like DATA are well-connected and media savvy. They need some measure of public support, but we shouldn't have illusions of mass support for global poverty reduction. The problem is even when politicians step up as President Bush has on AIDS, they don't get any credit for it.