One of the more illuminating articles published about China last year dealt not with its toy exports or the progress made on its three gorges dam, but with the fact that it ceased in 2006 to be a recipient of foreign food aid and instead became a net provider. That shift signaled China’s transition into the ranks of wealthy countries which provide assistance to poor nations. In principle that assistance is becoming even more critical as the divide between wealth and poverty grows.

In the years following World War Two, and the subsequent explosion in government-to-government aid, the provision of money, infrastructure, expertise, food, pharmaceuticals and other goods to poor nations has become a requirement of being rich, not an option. In terms of its successes, foreign aid did much to help Europe recover from the devastation of two wars in three decades. It has also enabled the more recent distribution of anti-retroviral drugs in Africa, food aid during famine, polio vaccinations for children. Yet foreign aid has also been criticized as an ineffective, inefficient, politically driven and mis-allocated mess. It is also considered both too large and too small a part of the budget, depending on who is asked (less than .2 percent of US Gross National Income was given as official foreign aid in 2006, about one hundred times less than the average American believes is contributed). In some cases, it is even thought to do harm.

The following books provide a more complete picture of the good and bad of foreign aid. They are readable and contradictory, alternately scathing in their reprobation and hopeful in the possibility of improvement. Though some are shriller than others, the collective take-away is that foreign aid is simultaneously necessary and deeply needful of improvement.

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, by Jeffrey Sachs
The 2004 publication of this best selling book confirmed Sachs’ status as a kind of rock star of aid economists. Likewise his ubiquitous, hopeful view of the world’s future has become the default position for those who care about the worlds’ poor and want an optimistic way to help them. The first two-thirds of the book function as a survey of Sachs’ career, first at Harvard and currently at Columbia’s Earth Institute. Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China – Sachs has worked with them all, and from that work has developed a theory of a ‘poverty trap’ which will keep extremely poor countries poor without assistance from foreign governments. His analysis suggest that assistance need not exceed .7 percent of the GDP of rich countries to effectively fulfill the six types of capital needed to lift people out of poverty: human capital (health, nutrition and skills), business capital (machinery, facilities, industry), infrastructure (roads, power, water, airports, telecom), natural capital (arable land, healthy soils), public institutional capital (functioning rule of law, government services, policing) and knowledge capital (scientific and technological know-how to raise productivity). The book’s thesis is that these things are all needed all at once if we are to see the end of poverty in our lifetimes. Critics of Sachs’ position argue that he oversimplifies things, but that is not true. Far from simple is the recommendation that each impoverished country undergo a “clinical economics” evaluation of its problems in order to create an action plan, akin to the way doctors diagnose disease in the human body and prescribe a treatment. The concern is more with his trust in the oversight potential of the UN, and his refusal to acknowledge that some bodies, despite the best doctors in the world, just don’t get better.

The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly
William Easterly has been marketed as the anti-Sachs as a consequence of this cogent, well-argued and sometimes amusing criticism of foreign aid as wasteful and ineffective. Formerly with the World Bank, Easterly’s book is peppered with personal anecdotes of projects witnessed first hand, as well as by statistical analysis which show, among other things, that formerly poor countries that have in the past twenty years successfully lifted themselves out of poverty have done so almost universally without aid assistance. This does not mean that Easterly is universally against aid. He is just against the use of aid as a development tool implemented through misguided, ineffective, top-down driven policies.

The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn’t Working, by Robert Calderisi
Robert Calderisi makes some of the same arguments as William Easterly, yet he focuses his analysis solely on Africa, home to more than half of the world’s extreme poor. Like his fellow former World Banker, Calderisi contends that much of the money that goes into aid for Africa is lost through corruption (a familiar argument that Sachs roundly criticizes), wastefulness and ineffective initiatives – and the only way to stop the hemorrhaging is to stop the aid. Calderisi suggests rewarding a few countries with good governance systems and dramatically decreasing the flow to the rest. He also wants to see more money go to supporting Africans who are “resisting oppression and violence”, a vague suggestion that has echoes of economist Paul Collier’s advocacy of military intervention.

Millions Saved: Proven Successes In Global Health, Ruth Levine
As an antidote to some of the grimmer realities presented by Easterly and Calderisi, researcher Ruth Levine with the Center for Global Development set out with the What Works Working Group (of which Easterly was a member) to identify success stories in the areas of improved global health. The book is a survey of case studies of aid effectiveness as applied to worldwide small pox eradication, material mortality in Sri Lanka, HIV infection in Thailand, guinea worm in Africa and other successful health initiatives that have saved millions of lives over the past twenty years.

The Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business, by Graham Hancock
For any readers who believe that the world of private aid is innocent of the waste, inefficiency and corruption that riddles government-to-government giving, Graham Hancock has news for you. In this shrill book he tackles the almost untouchable sphere of NGOs and private humanitarian agencies and shows where they also go wrong, with a vengeance. Unfortunately, he is not particularly interested in reform or improvement. He sees the entire sector as so broken and corrupt that the only rational option is to torch it, a position which is probably wrong, or at least inconsistent with the reality of the great deal of good done on the ground.

Other books of interest:
Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics, by Carol Lancaster
Challenging Foreign Aid: A Policymaker’s Guide to the Millennium Challenge Account, by Steven Radelet
Foreign Aid and Development: Lessons Learned and Directions for the Future (Routledge Studies in Development Economics), by Finn Tarp and Eter Hjertholm
Inside Foreign Aid, by Judith Tendler
Despite Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to the Third World Has Failed, by Thomas Dichter