Does foreign aid lift poor countries or hold them back?

Experts disagree, and the question has been highly contested for decades. There is wide agreement that aid alone is not enough to lift countries out of poverty. What's debated is how much it achieves, how much harm it can do, and which kinds work best.

Two economists stand for the opposing poles. In The End of Poverty (2005), Jeffrey Sachs argued that extreme poverty could be eliminated globally by 2025 through carefully planned aid. He pictured very poor countries as stuck below the bottom rung of the development ladder; once over it, they could climb into the global market economy and need much less aid. He called for aid to rise from $65 billion in 2002 to $135 to $195 billion a year by 2015.

William Easterly answered with The White Man's Burden (2006). He framed poverty as "twin tragedies": hundreds of millions in extreme poverty, and, after about fifty years and some $2.3 trillion in Western aid, comparatively little to show for the spending. His remedy: abandon the grand plan. He contrasted "Planners", who set big goals from outside without feedback or accountability, with "Searchers", who work small, test what works and are held accountable. Easterly does not claim all aid has failed; he credits public-health successes like vaccination campaigns.

The data don't settle it. Studies in the late 20th century often found aid's average effect minimal or negative, while early 21st-century studies are more affirmative, though far from clear. Sachs defended scaled-up investment against what he called a piecemeal approach, and Amartya Sen judged Easterly's rejection of planning too sweeping.

How aid is delivered matters too. In 2009 in sub-Saharan Africa, locally bought food cost 34 percent less and arrived 100 days faster than food shipped from the United States.