It is estimated that around one third (34.4%) of taxpayers earning more than $100,000 (before tax) did not claim a tax deduction for a donation to charity in 2006–07.
total bilateral aid from OECD-DAC donors represents about 0.32% of their combined gross national income (GNI). Only Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden exceeded the United Nations recommended development aid target of 0.7% of GNI.
An OECD survey shows that most donors plan to increase aid over the next three years, though at a slower pace than before: 2% per year between now and 2013, compared to the average 8% per year over the past three years. Aid to Africa is likely to rise by just 1% per year in real terms, compared to an average of 13% over the past three years. At this rate, any additional aid to the African countries will be outpaced by population growth, which is not good news for the fight against poverty or reaching the Millennium Development Goals.
According to Washington-based Refugees International the U.S. has admitted fewer than 800 Iraqi refugees since the invasion, Sweden had accepted 18,000 and Australia had resettled almost 6,000.
Most Americans couldn’t care less about the harm their subsidies inflicts on the Third World. Respondents were given these alternatives:
A. Rather than giving poor countries foreign aid, it is better to let them export what they can produce. For many poor countries agricultural products are one of the few things they can export. We should not undercut them by flooding the world market with cheap subsidized farm products.
B. Farmers in poor countries work for much lower returns than American farmers. Without government subsidies, American farmers won’t be able to compete and a lot of people working on farms will end up unemployed.
38% preferred A; 53% preferred B.
Taken together, there was clear evidence that decisions of whether or not to donate to victims of humanitarian disasters are informed by the perceived cause of a disaster. Results showed that donors were more reluctant to donate to victims of humanly caused rather than natural disasters. This was to no small extent due to the fact that donors tended to perceive victims of humanly caused disasters as being more blameworthy and less pro-active in helping themselves: People form less positive impressions of victims of humanly caused events.
This amounts to a systematic bias against people suffering from humanly caused disasters: In line with the just world belief hypothesis, people tend to blame victims wherever possible, and humanly caused events present more opportunities for victim blame. More negative cognitions about the victims on other dimensions like self-help follow suit. People perceive victims of humanly caused events in more negative terms even when there is no information available about the victims’ blameworthiness or self-helping efforts.
Zagefka, H., Noor, M., Brown, R., de Moura, G., and Hopthrow, T. (2010). Donating to disaster victims: Responses to natural and humanly caused events. European Journal of Social Psychology.
“Despite six months of appeals, the funds obtained to respond to the crisis have been slow to arrive and insufficient. For Niger, a further US$107 million is needed in order to reach the amount of US$130 million announced by the United Nations” … And note that the response of UN agencies such the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) and the WFP (World Food Programme) still cover only 50 per cent of needs.
the [Haitian] government was weak before the quake and devastated afterwards: one-sixth of its staff died, virtually all its buildings were damaged, and its meagre tax revenues fell by 80%. Reconstruction takes money, and only a tiny fraction of the $5.3 billion in promised aid has materialised. The biggest solid pledge, a $1.15 billion commitment from America, has been held up in Congress. Much of the money may never arrive: based on the record following other disasters, Haitian officials expect to get just 15-20% of the pledged funds.
Yet over 1m people are still packed into 1,300 tent cities in and around [Haiti’s] capital. The camps’ population is rising … The state has little presence in them, and charities cater to only around a quarter of them.
