Publication

This paper illustrates that the international goal for rich countries to devote 0.7 percent of their national income to development assistance has become a cause célèbre for aid activists and has been accepted in many official quarters as the legitimate target for aid budgets. The author claims that the 0.7 percent target was calculated using a series of assumptions that are no longer true and justified by a model that is no longer considered credible. The author suggests that it would be far better to estimate aid needs by starting on the recipient side with a meaningful model of how aid affects development.