Who deserves aid? Equality of opportunity, international aid and poverty reduction

Denis Cogneau () and David Naudet ()
Additional contact information
David Naudet: DIAL, Paris

No 110, Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers from Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: We build and implement a normative procedure to allocate international aid based on equality of opportunity concerning the risk of poverty. This is an alternative to Collier and Dollar’s proposal (2001) which stresses the impact of aid on worldwide poverty reduction. The big problem with their approach, as regards distributive justice, is that it leaves very great inequality in poverty risk between inhabitants of countries with widely varying structural disadvantages. We draw on post-welfarist theories of social justice, especially those of John Roemer. However our proposal is very different to that of Llavador and Roemer (2001), which has serious methodological errors and reaches contradictory conclusions. Our proposed allocations, like those of Collier and Dollar, differ from current aid allocation by giving more to the poorest countries. Apart from this agreement, our equality of opportunity principle takes account of structural disadvantages to growth rather than quality of past policies. Our kind of allocation shares out poverty risks much more fairly among the world’s population, while reducing global poverty almost as effectively as Collier and Dollar\'s.

Keywords: International aid; Equality of Opportunity; Poverty Reduction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 F35 I30 O19 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2005-07-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Who Deserves Aid? Equality of Opportunity, International Aid, and Poverty Reduction (2007)
Working Paper: Who deserves aid? Equality of opportunity,international aid and poverty reduction (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:got:iaidps:110

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