The perception that America is the most generous country in the world is one held by a majority of Americans, according to a 2001 poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes based at the University of Maryland. The think tank, which studies public attitudes toward various international topics, found that the average American believes that the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on assistance to developing nations, more than 20 times the actual figure. Even when researchers told those being questioned that foreign aid does not include military assistance to other countries, the average response was that the United States spends 23 percent of its budget on foreign aid.
But the relatively low US per capita donation to the tsunami-ravaged region reflects a larger pattern of a decline in official US foreign assistance in recent decades.
In the aftermath of World War II, the US government gave as much as 2 percent of its total gross national product to help countries rebuild. That figure dropped to about 0.5 percent of GNP during most of the 1960s and 1970s, and it fell precipitously during the Reagan administration to its current level of about 0.15 percent of GNP, according to figures compiled by Sachs and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development based in Paris.
While the United States gives the most foreign development aid in terms of dollars, it ranks lowest among wealthy countries in terms of official development assistance as a percentage of gross national income.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States gave $16.2 billion in development aid in 2003, or an amount equal to 0.15 percent of the US gross national income. Norway, with official development assistance of $2 billion, ranked highest, giving 0.92 percent of its 2003 gross national income. France allotted 0.41 percent of its gross national income to development aid in 2003, according to the organization's figures.
At a global development conference in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002, the world's 22 wealthiest countries, including the United States, were instructed by the General Assembly to provide 0.7 percent of GNP. But the target of the so-called Monterrey Protocol has been met by only five countries. They are Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
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