Search

Nobody would deny that all kids deserve to learn to read and do basic math, at a bare minimum. But in a low-income context facing stark budgetary trade-offs, how much should governments and donors be willing to spend to improve test scores by, say, 0.2 standard deviations? $100 per pupil? $200? More...

We’ve previously looked at the sectoral and geographic impact of the proposed USAID award cuts. But for those who want to see US foreign assistance back on its feet, it is also worth looking at the impact on awardees—the firms, nonprofits, and international organizations that implement USAID projec...

Last week, we published an estimate of cuts to USAID programs at the sectoral level based on two leaked documents covering cancelled and retained awards. Since then, a new version of the terminated and retained awards list was shared with Congress. Using that updated list, we revise our earlier sect...

Last week we presented some estimates of the extent and distribution of cuts to USAID assistance. Since then, a list of active USAID projects has also been leaked. We recalculate our estimates of active and cancelled USAID grants from this data.

We present some estimates for lives saved by US assistance worldwide, with illustrative estimates by recipient country. Our core estimates are for deaths prevented from HIV/AIDS, vaccine-preventable illnesses covered by Gavi, tuberculosis, malaria, and emergency/humanitarian relief. We suggest the n...

The bottom line: we estimate the cancelled awards represent somewhere over 34 percent of USAID programming. And notably, “life-saving” program areas like maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis are not spared from major cuts. But there’s a lot of guesswork in those estimates.

Check out CGD experts' research on USAID cuts, as featured in the Daily Mail.

Check out Rachel Bonnifield and Justin Sandefur's research, as referenced in The Washington Post.

A viral claim, spread and amplified by Elon Musk, suggests that only 10 percent of USAID money reaches its intended beneficiaries. This is a wildly incorrect and misleading interpretation of a different statistic—that 10 percent of USAID payments are made directly to organizations in the developing ...

Check out CGD experts' research on malaria vaccines, as referenced in Vox.