Chris Blattman’s Blog: What could a development economist buy for $700 billion?
October 2nd 2008 by angol in EconomicsThis surprised me, It seems that I’m swinging between feelings of how easy and hard achieving the MDGs is.
01 October 2008
What could a development economist buy for $700 billion?
Duncan Green puts the bailout in an international perspective:
To put the proposed Wall Street bailout into perspective. $700bn:
* Would clear the accumulated debt of the 49 poorest countries in the world ($375bn) twice over
* Is almost 5 times the annual amount of extra aid needed to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals on poverty, health, education etc ($150bn a year)
* Is about 7 years of current global aid levels ($104bn in 2007)
* Is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years (UNDP calculates it would take $300bn to get the entire world population over the $1 a day poverty line).
On the other hand it’s:
* only a quarter of the cost of the Iraq war ($3 trillion on Joseph Stiglitz’ calculation )
* a half of annual global military spending ($1339 bn)
Chris Blattman’s Blog: What could a development economist buy for $700 billion?.
