raise healthy children. Although income can be a decent proxy for these things, if you look only at income, you can miss the bigger picture.
For example, Nigeria has a higher average income than Vietnam, Pakistan, or Ghana. But compared with people in those countries, Nigerians die younger, are less likely to be literate, and are more likely to die before age 5 or in childbirth.
The point of aid is not to raise incomes; it is to help people improve their lives. So income should not be the only measure of success.
In Washington I’ll be meeting with leaders at the World Bank and other aid agencies who are working on these challenges. I’ve heard many good ideas that should be on the table. Could we broaden the eligibility requirements beyond income, to include things like measures of health, education, and farmers’ productivity? Could we make the boundary between low- and middle-income less clear-cut, and the transition away from aid more gradual? Could we help countries identify their remaining pockets of extreme poverty and target aid to just those areas?
These are tough questions. But it’s important to remember that we’re asking them not because things are going badly, but because things are going well. Hundreds of millions of people in dozens of countries have been lifted out of poverty. More are on the way. Now we need to make sure that the progress benefits as many people as possible.
