Foreign Aid: Understanding Data Used to Compare Donors

Abstract

There are various views on how to total U.S. spending on foreign aid and how U.S. transfers compare with those from other major donors. For the United States, the size of the foreign aid budget is frequently measured in terms of annual appropriations approved for international assistance programs, using either the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill total, or a slightly modified calculation that includes foreign aid funds enacted in appropriation measures other than Foreign Operations. In comparing the United States with other international aid donors, the most common source of information is the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). There are significant scope and methodological differences, however, between U.S. appropriations figures and those used by the DAC. This report explains those differences and discusses other issues related to the debate over how much wealthy countries contribute to international development and what share U.S. resources represent.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 23, 2005
Accession Number
ADA457340

Entities

People

  • Larry Nowels

Organizations

  • Library of Congress

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Congress
  • Developing Nations
  • Disasters
  • Disbursements
  • European Union
  • Foreign Aid
  • Governments
  • Human Resources
  • Indian Ocean
  • International Relations
  • Military Equipment
  • Money
  • National Security
  • Security
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
  • United States Government

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • International Relations and European Studies
  • Public Financial Management and Budgeting