It’s a topic that is regularly covered in the news but if we’re being honest, not many of us really understand the implications of foreign aid.
In its simplest form, it might be described as the process of sending money to other countries. Naturally, this creates questions.
At the same time, this is something of a dry subject. Reading through pages and pages of foreign aid text is enough to send anyone crazy, which is where this collation comes in.
Over the last few months (and even longer) a whole host of infographics have covered the topic and to hopefully shed a little more light on the topic, here is an overview on several of our favorites.
A breakdown of US contributions
SOURCE: https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2015/us-foreign-aid-helps-women-and-families-and-saves-lives
This first infographic was actually published in 2015. In comparison to most infographics, there’s no doubt that it’s exceptionally short and just provides a few headline statistics.
Of course, these headline stats are pretty hard hitting. The aim of the infographic isn’t necessarily there to show how much foreign aid the US pledge every year (although it does this loud and clear), but more about highlighting the results it achieves. It’s a great, cut-down version of what works best when it comes to foreign aid.
An (updated) breakdown of US contributions
SOURCE: https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2019/impact-us-international-family-planning-assistance-2019
We found this next infographic even more interesting, as it’s actually an updated version of the previous one!
In some ways, it has a degree of controversy about it, with the US now dedicating less to foreign aid ($607m versus $610m).
The benefits are still there, but this version of the infographic still goes into a bit more detail.
The league table of foreign aid around the world
SOURCE: https://www.wristband.com/content/which-countries-provide-receive-most-foreign-aid/
We spoke about how much money the US pledges towards foreign aid in our previous two infographics, but this next one perhaps wraps a little more context around it.
In truth, it’s not just about the US, but about the world as a whole which makes it even more interesting. It shows how foreign aid is distributed between countries from a GDP perspective – which perhaps gives a greater degree of fairness about the stats.
The amount of foreign aid per capita
SOURCE: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/which-countries-give-most-aid-oecd/
We’ve just looked at GDP, but this next resource is all about the amount of foreign aid per capita. In other words, how much foreign aid is given for each person in the country.
Interestingly, the US doesn’t make the cut – but obviously it’s debatable whether this is an accurate way to measure foreign aid anyway.
What’s foreign aid all about?
SOURCE: https://www.business2community.com/infographics/u-s-foreign-aid-around-world-infographic-0714494
This final infographic does touch upon the numbers, but the reason we picked it out was because of the reasons behind foreign aid. It talks through the objectives, before then looking at how the amount of foreign aid compares to all of the other expenses that the country has.
For those wanting to get to grips with this topic, this is an excellent starting place.
