A long time ago, do gooders in the 1st world countries noticed the poverty in third world countries, and decided that the best way they could help was by 'charity' and providing loans so these countries could supposedly get on their feet and support themselves to the same 'standards' of the first world countries.
What in fact happened was that money and aid was provided to corrupt governments, who mostly squandered it, leaving the country in debt for stupid amounts of money it had no hope of repaying, with the interest each year on the debt being too much to pay let alone the full amount. This is now generally regarded as a mistake and is referred to as the 'third world debt', and in some cases has been cancelled by the issuing countries.
Yet still there are those that believe that somehow these countries will only be able to advance if given sufficient pots of gold from the first world.
If we ignore the problem of corruption, and totally inappropriate aid (for example education in places where there is no opportunity to utilize that education), there is still an incredibly glaring reason why increasing aid is unlikely to reduce human poverty and misery.
It stems down to very basic population ecology - the concept of the 'carrying capacity'.
From wikipedia:
"The supportable population of an organism, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available within an ecosystem is known as the ecosystem's carrying capacity for that organism. For the human population more complex variables such as sanitation and medical care are sometimes considered as part of the necessary infrastructure.
As population density increases, birth rate often decrease and death rates typically increase. The difference between the birth rate and the death rate is the "natural increase." The carrying capacity could support a positive natural increase, or could require a negative natural increase. Carrying capacity is thus the number of individuals an environment can support without significant negative impacts to the given organism and its environment. A factor that keeps population size at equilibrium is known as a regulating factor. The origins of the term lie in its use in the shipping industry to describe freight capacity, and a recent review finds the first use of the term in an 1845 report by the US Secretary of State to the Senate (Sayre, 2007).
Below carrying capacity, populations typically increase, while above, they typically decrease. Population size decreases above carrying capacity due to a range of factors depending on the species concerned, but can include insufficient space, food supply, or sunlight. The carrying capacity of an environment may vary for different species and may change over time due to a variety of factors including: food availability; water supply; environmental conditions; and living space."
In many third world countries such as africa there is a tendency for large families. That is, with no social security or pensions, a family depends on their children for survival and prosperity. Thus there is as in many species the tendency for the population to increase dramatically over time, if we reduce factors such as disease, war and malnutrition.
In the areas that cause the most concern the population is often by and large limited by these 'misery' factors, such as poverty and disease.
So you have in a village for example, 500 people leading an ok life, and 500 people living in absolute misery, on the brink of death.
Now let's have a look at what happens when you apply aid from the 1st world.
Initially there is much happiness as all of those 1000 people are released from complete poverty and can live an ok life.
However, the problem comes when you consider the population size over time. With this extra help, more of the population live to an older age, and produce many children. The aid that was once there either dries up, or best case stays at the previous level.
What you now end up with is for example, 2000 people living in the same area.
With aid removed, perhaps the land can support 500 people to live comfortably, and now 1500 are living in poverty!! Or best case you have 1500 people permanently dependent on outside financial support.
That's right, think about it for a second. By all that 'do gooding' action, you have let the population increase beyond it's carrying capacity, and you have in effect, tripled the human misery!!
This is why any 1st world intervention to supposedly 'help' a 3rd world country must be carefully planned - because you can see that in the majority of cases, it will result in an increase in suffering, rather than a decrease.
It would seem that the most obvious thing to do to decrease suffering in a harsh part of the world, is to limit the amount of children, so that those that do live there can be better supported by the environment.
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