FYI: how the USA does & doesn't fund foreign aid
08:57, 18 February 2009
.. Posted in Development, Relief and Advocacy Efforts.. Link
Some food for thought:
Developed countries such as the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and members of the European Union employ thousands of people in their efforts to plan, coordinate, and sometimes even deliver assistance to communities in other countries where it is needed. The United States is the largest provider of aid, by overall amount of money, spreading some $22 billion around the world in 2007, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
But when measured as a percentage of a country's total income, or GNI, every other developed country except Greece provides more foreign assistance than the United States. Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Denmark all commit close to 1 percent of their GNI to foreign assistance. The United States only committed 0.18 percent of its national income in 2007, according to Oxfam.
The US foreign assistance budget was approximately $35 billion in 2007, or a little more than 1 percent of the total federal budget, according to the U.S. State Department, which administers foreign aid programs through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In comparison, the United States military budget for 2008 was more than $700 billion, according to nonprofit advocacy group Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
