Child Health in Egypt and Iraq: Our Tax Dollars at Work

May 14, 2007

According to a new report from Save the Children, Egypt tops the list of countries that reduced child mortality since 1990, while Iraq performed worst, recording a devastating increase in child deaths. CGD director of programs and senior fellow Ruth Levine notes that both countries are strategically important to the U.S., and both have absorbed vast amounts of U.S. money: Egypt in “soft power” applications and Iraq in “hard power.” If reductions in child mortality were used as an indicator of U.S. foreign policy success, she says, the U.S. would not be spending one-fifth of the federal budget on the military and less than one half of one percent on development assistance.
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