What Would the World Look Like Today Without Foreign Assistance?

Conditions in the developing world have improved more in the second half of the 20th century than in the previous 500 years. Most of the credit must go to the people of the developing world themselves. Improved technology and communications, scientific breakthroughs, courageous individual leadership, private capital, the surge of democracy and many other factors have also played a role in this rapid progress. It is equally clear that foreign assistance programs have had a vital catalytic role in improving the world.

While it is obviously difficult to predict exactly what the world would look like today had there not been foreign assistance programs, it is clear these efforts have had a tremendous impact.

Certainly, a number of speculations can easily be supported. Without foreign assistance programs over the last three decades, there would probably be more than 500 million more people on Earth today, largely because international family planning programs would have been unavailable to tens of millions of couples. As a consequence, the world today would be more crowded, more polluted and poorer.

Five hundred million additional people would use 4.8 million more barrels of oil, or its equivalent, annually. Burning this additional fuel would add about 10 percent to total world carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, or about 2 billion tons of C02, and probably accelerate global warming.

The world would need to produce an additional 150 million tons of grain to avoid widespread malnutrition. Producing this much food would require an additional 64 million hectares of land - an area larger than the combined territory of France, the Netherlands and Belgium. The pressure for more agricultural production and for more wood and paper products would reduce the world's tropical forests by another 2 percent.

Without foreign assistance over the last 30 years, smallpox would still exist as a disease, and up to 80 million lives would have been lost to this killer. Industrialized nations could be spending billions on immunization and surveillance costs. Because the Green Revolution would not have taken place, India would use twice as much land as it currently does to produce the same agricultural yields.

Hundreds of millions of people would never have had a chance to get a basic education because support for building schools, providing books and encouraging educational reform was not forthcoming. More than 10 million entrepreneurs, mostly women, would never have received "microenterprise" loans to help start small businesses. More than 80 nations would never have received assistance in helping put basic economic reforms in place.

Tens of millions of victims of war and famine would not have received emergency assistance when they were most vulnerable. Africa would not have in place an extensive famine early warning system that helps warn governments and farmers about the potential for upcoming droughts. Latin America and Asia would not have received assistance in mitigating the damages from natural disasters as diverse as volcanoes and avalanches.

Every year, 5 million more infants would have died - a fact made even more remarkable when one considers how steeply the absolute number of deaths have fallen at a time when total population has grown tremendously.

In short, without foreign assistance to help support the efforts of the people of the developing world, the world would be a far worse place in which to live - for young and old, for urban and rural, for North and South.

Indeed, probably the greatest lesson of development over the last 30 years has been that investments in people have the highest returns. Educated, healthy people able to participate in a democracy make a greater contribution to a developing country than any road, bridge or dam. By giving people the power to change their lives, development assistance is helping change the world.

Consider the broad changes from 30 years ago. Literacy has risen by almost 50 percent. Infant mortality has been halved. The average woman now has three, not six, children. The percentage of people living in absolute poverty has been cut almost in half. Seventy-one more nations have become `free' or `partly free.' The percentage of population with access to clean water has tripled. Life expectancy has risen by more than a decade.