A time of giving? Christmas Spending vs Foreign Aid
In 2015 the Dutch banking company ING conducted a survey of spending on Christmas gifts across 14 countries. The results make for interesting reading, with Brits saying they planned to spend an average of €420 on Christmas presents, and Romanians planning to spend 32% of a month’s salary. This got me thinking about the overall spending on Christmas gifts, and how this would compare to national spending on another kind of giving, that of Official Development Assistance (ODA), commonly thought of as foreign aid.
Combining ING’s data with the adult population size of each country enabled me to produce a rough estimate of how much each country spends on Christmas gifts. We can then compare this overall spending figure to each country’s yearly spending on ODA. These findings are summarised in the table below.
Five countries spend as much on Christmas gifts, as the world’s richest countries do on all development aid.
Unsurprisingly, given its large population and high income, the USA spends the most on Christmas gifts at a whopping €75.5 billion ($89.0 billion). The USA is followed by the UK (€17.7bn or $20.9bn) and then Germany (€11.3bn or $13.3bn). In total the 14 countries from the ING survey spend almost €140 billion ($165 bn) on Christmas gifts.
Data from the OECD shows that in 2016, total spending of its 35 members, on Official Development Assistance reached $142.6bn (€124.4bn). That means that the 14 ING-surveyed countries spend more on Christmas gifts than the world’s richest countries do on development aid. In fact, just five countries — USA, UK, Germany, France, and Italy spend as much on Christmas gifts as the OECD 35 does on aid.
The USA spends 27 times more on Christmas gifts that it does on foreign aid.
Of the sampled countries, only one spends more on ODA than Christmas gifts — The Netherlands. Most European countries spend between five and 20 times more on Christmas gifts than they do on aid over a whole year. In America, this rises to 27 times more, while in Eastern Europe, this difference is even higher.
Of course, spending on Christmas gifts only makes up a portion of people’s overall spending on Christmas. Once you consider the additional spending on things like food, decorations, parties and events, the overall difference between spending on Christmas versus aid becomes even more pronounced. Yet if everyone in America donated just 1% of their spending on Christmas gifts, they could match France’s aid budget for an entire year.
Research has shown that during the Christmas period, people tend to give more money to charity. However, peoples’ generosity in giving gifts to friends and family, and to charities, at Christmas is not matched by a national commitment to helping those around the world who are most in need. While aid isn’t going to solve all the world’s problems, I think this blog helps to highlight the vast differences between the richest and poorest countries and perhaps show that there’s much more individuals and governments can do to help make the world a better place for everyone.
