The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.

• Author: Burnham, James B.
• Position: Book review

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 New York: Penguin, 2006. Pp. 436. $27.95.

William Easterly reminds us that rich-country governments' efforts to help poorer nations raise their living standards go back at least to Robert Owens's utopian visions in the nineteenth century. Owens argued that "through the progress of physical and mental science ... perpetual prosperity" for all was in sight (p. 19). However, this particular road to riches, despite being paved with the best of intentions and billions of dollars (and other currencies), is littered with countless failed theories and "bold initiatives" and shows no clear-cut evidence of ever reaching its final destination.

A member of New York University's economics department, Easterly is a former World Bank senior staffer with a refreshing sense of humility (two properties not often found together). Now, after an earlier frank discussion of foreign aid in his book The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), he reveals in The White Man's Burden the secret of economic growth: there is no secret! Not only does no magic formula exist to help poorer countries raise their living standards, but substantial evidence indicates that many (most?) foreign-aid programs hold back the search for local solutions to overcome the barriers to economic growth and to aid the poor by using local institutions and markets.

Why do World Bank billions, U.S. Agency for International Development grants, and International Monetary Fund "Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility" loans disappear into the sand, for the most part? As Easterly shows, these programs are designed primarily to reflect the interests of the donors ("The Rich") and their perceptions of what is best for the recipients ("The Rest"). Every few years, a G-8 summit of world leaders or a similar gathering declares a grand utopian "big push" to eradicate poverty in Africa or to provide universal access to water and sanitation or to accomplish a similar objective. The current Big Idea is the set of eight "Millennium Development Goals" for 2015, launched with great fanfare at the United Nations in September 2000. Because most of the goals are utopian, they not only fail, but they divert resources from activities that might actually do some good.

Problems are compounded because the donors' cash is...