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

• Author: Loungani, Prakash
• 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 William Easterly New York: The Penguin Press, 2006, 436 pp.

In 1982, Peter Bauer coauthored an article with the title "Foreign Aid Isn't." This title could serve as an apt summary of William Easterly's new book.

Easterly, an economics professor at New York University and formerly a senior research economist at the World Bank, argues that foreign aid is neither necessary nor sufficient to raise living standards in developing countries. It is not necessary because several countries have been able to raise standards without a big aid-financed push--Korea is an obvious example. And it is far from sufficient because many countries have remained mired in poverty despite receiving substantial foreign aid. "The typical country in Africa," Easterly writes, "received more than 15 percent of its income from foreign donors in the 1990s," but that "surge in aid was not successful in reversing or halting the slide in growth of income per capita toward zero" (p. 45). Easterly suggests that the lack of growth in many developing countries is due to bad government, not to inadequate foreign aid. "One gut instinct that many people have about the poverty of nations is probably close to the target: it's all politics" (p. 115).

Nearly all of Easterly's conclusions serve to highlight the prescience of Bauer's work, which makes the book's solitary reference to Bauer seem rather stingy. Start with the term "foreign aid." In "Development Aid: End It or Mend It" (International Center for Economic Growth, Occasional Papers No. 43, 1993), Bauer railed against calling it aid because "it promotes an unquestioning attitude. It disarms criticism, obscures realities, and prejudges results. Who could be against aid to the less fortunate? The term has enabled aid supporters to claim a monopoly of compassion and to dismiss critics as lacking in understanding and sympathy" (p. 2).

Bauer then went on to note the more substantive criticism that "the term also clearly implies that the policy must benefit the population of the recipient countries, which is not the case." Easterly agrees: "The West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades," he writes, adding that he feels like "a Scrooge" for pointing out that all this "well-meaning compassion" has brought about little improvement in the lot of the world's poor (p. 4).

Next consider what Easterly calls "Legend...