(Illustration by Ben Wiseman)
Development economists have long noted the negative impact that humanitarian aid can have on the countries that it’s supposed to help. There is a wealth of scholarship, for example, that explores how armed factions in strife-prone countries can manipulate the provision of aid to their own advantage. But most of the available evidence on that topic has been anecdotal. In a recently published study, however, researchers present empirical evidence that shows a clear connection between the delivery of food aid and the incidence of civil conflict.
Nathan Nunn, a professor of economics at Harvard University, and Nancy Qian, an associate professor of economics at Yale University, examined the causal effect of US food aid on conflict by using the variable of US wheat production to measure changes in aid delivery. They focused on wheat because that product made up the majority of US food aid shipments during the period of their study (1971 to 2006) and because the scale of that aid correlates positively with US wheat surpluses. Significantly, food aid shipments do not correlate with conditions on the ground in recipient countries. By using this method, the researchers were able to establish food aid as an independent variable, and they ruled out the possibility that the incidence of conflict was actually driving the delivery of aid.
The researchers then studied the incidence of civil conflicts and interstate conflicts in countries that received food aid. After comparing those sets of data, they identified a large and statistically significant effect of US food aid on the incidence of armed conflict within a state but found that food aid had no effect on the incidence of conflict between states.
The reason for that disparity between civil and international conflict isn’t clear, but Qian suggests that the relative scale of food aid is probably a critical factor. “Food aid is only a tiny component of total aid,” she says. “It’s not enough money such that two countries are going to get engaged into an international conflict over it.” Civil conflicts, by contrast, often involve small militia groups for which even modest amounts of food aid can be a vital resource. “When aid comes, people fight over the aid, or they steal the aid,” Qian explains. “By stealing the aid, soldiers [increase their ability] to fight for longer.”
An equally important finding involves the recent history of countries that receive food aid. Nunn and Qian found that the delivery of food aid tends to prolong a period of existing conflict or to spark a renewal of conflict. It does not, however, trigger the onset of conflict in countries with a recent history of civil peace. “If you gave food aid to Japan after the tsunami, it would be crazy to think that people there would enter into civil war [over it],” Qian says. Other factors, the researchers discovered, have little or no effect on whether food aid results in civil conflict. It doesn’t matter how poor a country is, how bad its roads are, or how scarce its food is. What matters is whether the country has undergone a period of conflict in recent years.
Kevin Starr, managing director of the Mulago Foundation, says that Nunn and Qian’s findings match his experience of conducting development work in countries where civil strife is common. He cites a recent visit that he made to northern Kenya, a conflict-ridden region where US food aid has become a substantial part of the local economy. There he observed that people who are traditionally nomadic are now more likely to stay put because of the food aid that flows into the area. The resulting increase in population density worsens local tensions. “It’s plausible that humanitarian food is playing an enabling role in continued environmental degradation and conflict,” Starr says.
Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “US Food Aid and Civil Conflict,” American Economic Review, 104, 2014.
Read more stories by Adrienne Day.