US Aid

The recent controversy over the amount of US aid to Southeast Asia is an interesting one. Is the US a generous nation? You be the judge.

As of early Tuesday, dozens of countries and relief groups had pledged $81 million in help for South and East Asia, said the Geneva-based U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The United States uses the most common measure of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 30 rich nations that counts development aid.

By that measure, the United States spent almost $15.8 billion for "official development assistance" to developing countries in 2003. Next closest was Japan, at $8.9 billion. That doesn't include billions more the United States spends in other areas such as AIDS and HIV programs and other U.N. assistance.

Measured another way, as a percentage of gross national product, the OECD's figures on development aid show that as of April, none of the world's richest countries donated even 1 percent of its gross national product. Norway was highest, at 0.92 percent; the United States was last, at 0.14 percent.

Such figures were what prompted Jan Egeland -- the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator and former head of the Norwegian Red Cross -- to challenge the giving of rich nations.

"We were more generous when we were less rich, many of the rich countries," Egeland said. "And it is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really.... Even Christmas time should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become."

...Natsios said the Paris organization's figures overlook a key factor -- the billions more Americans give each year in private donations.

Americans last year gave an estimated $241 billion to charitable causes -- domestic and foreign -- according to a study by Giving USA Foundation. That's up from $234 billion in 2002. The foundation did not break down how much was for domestic causes and how much for foreign.

"That's a European standard, this percentage that's used," Natsios said. "The United States, for 40 years, has never accepted these standards that it should be based on the gross national product. We base it on the actual dollars that we spent."