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U.S. in the World: Talking Global Issues With Americans -- A Practical Guide

America is facing critical choices about who it is and wants to be in an increasingly interconnected world -- choices that will have a profound impact on Americans, on other peoples and countries, and on future generations. This guide pulls together facts and arguments and the most effective ways to put them across for advocates of pragmatic, principled, effective and collaborative U.S.


Summary of Surveys on Development Aid, Global Hunger, and Poverty: Harris Interactive/Chicago Council on Foreign Relations/German Marshall Fund Worldviews 2002 Survey (2002)

Report Date: September 4, 2002
Data Collected: June 1-30, 2002
Survey Population: 2,862 telephone interviews; 400 in-person interviews
Learn more about this survey.

Key Findings

  • When cast in general terms, Americans give domestic concerns a much higher priority than foreign aid. Only a modest majority of 54% of those surveyed favor giving economic aid on the whole, and 48% say they favor cutting back, while only 14% want to expand economic aid.
  • At the same time, Americans drastically overestimate the amount of money spent on foreign aid. The median estimate of foreign aid as a percentage of the federal budget was 25%, or more than 25 times the actual figure.
  • 2% of respondents gave a correct estimate of 1% of the budget or less. Only 13% of Americans say that this figure is appropriate.
  • When asked how much of the federal budget should go to foreign aid, the median response was 10%.
  • Americans make sharp distinctions when the purposes of foreign aid are made explicit, favoring foreign aid given to address world hunger and poverty over that given for strategic purposes. 61% of Americans say that combating world hunger should be a very important goal of U.S. foreign policy.
  • 84% say they favor food and medical assistance to people in needy countries, with only 12% opposed.
  • 74% favor aid that helps needy countries develop their economies.
  • Aid for programs to reduce population growth and combat AIDS is very popular. 80% favor aid for women’s education in poor countries to help reduce population growth, 79% favor assistance with the prevention and treatment of AIDS in poor countries, and “in none of these instances of humanitarian foreign aid does the level of public opposition rise above 27%.”
  • In other contexts the priority of poverty receives mixed responses. When associated with a direct strategic threat, foreign aid is very popular: 78% favor helping poor countries develop their economies as a measure to combat international terrorism.
  • However, when placed among other competing foreign policy goals such as protecting jobs and fighting terrorism per se, only 30% of Americans say that helping to improve the standard of living of less developed nations should be a very important goal of U.S. foreign policy (though 56% say it should be a “somewhat” important goal).

Methodology
Harris Interactive conducted 2,862 telephone interviews in the United States among men and women 18 years of age and older, using a random digit dialing technique with a national probability sample; comparability with the in-person Chicago Council studies of 1998 was ensured. All interviewing of the general public was conducted between June 1 and June 30, 2002. Data for the telephone and in-person interviews were weighted separately according to known demographic characteristics of the population and merged to form a combined sample (n=3,262). The margins of error in this study range from 1.7 percentage points (for questions asked of all respondents) up to 4 percentage points (for questions asked of 700 respondents).”

Return to Index of Surveys.