Can Global Egalitarians Defend the Welfare State?

This article is adapted from my MPhil thesis, and focuses on the more practical and empirical side of the globel egalitarian's dilemma with respect to the welfare state

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Egalitarians often see the welfare state as the obvious vehicle for their principles. But its beneficiaries are relatively affluent by international standards. For example, an average household in the bottom 5% of the French income distribution will be among the richest 28% of humanity.[1] From a global perspective, the welfare state redistributes from the super-rich to the upper middle class.

A number of egalitarians have spotted this potential tension in their thought without exploring it fully. For example, Stuart White believes that a “cluster of issues around global and intergenerational justice is likely to become as important as the classical debates between left and right on the justice of the welfare state”.[2] Similarly, Robert Goodin notes that “it is logically very difficult indeed not to be drawn ‘beyond the welfare state’ and extend similar protections to the needy worldwide”.[3]  Meanwhile, different political theorists have developed a strong defence of the idea that egalitarian concerns should not be limited to nation states. This view, known as global egalitarianism, holds that material inequalities between individuals in different nations are morally problematic.

This opportunity to discomfit egalitarians has not escaped the notice of those on the right. Sam Bowman, of the libertarian think tank The Adam Smith Institute, exploits it to bait his ideological opponents:

support for a welfare state in the UK is wrongheaded even if you believe that a welfare state is a good way of combating poverty. If throwing money at people improves their long-run living standards, the left should oppose a welfare state in Britain and want to direct all social spending to the developing world.[4]

Bowman goes too far in suggesting global egalitarians are committed to dismantling the entire welfare state – this would inevitably lead to people in places like the UK becoming impoverished even by global standards. The real question is whether global egalitarians can support more generous welfare provision in affluent countries (like the UK) than elsewhere. If not, this would certainly imply dramatic cuts to Western welfare states, such as Britain’s.

In this article, I want to argue that even if global inequality renders welfare states as generous as those of Western countries morally unjustifiable in principle, global egalitarians still have pragmatic reasons to defend them.[5] Given certain contingent facts about public opinion in developed countries, bigger welfare states are associated with support for measures that benefit the global poor. I take three measures in turn – aid, trade and migration – and explain (i) how each of these contributes to mitigating global inequality, and (ii) how each of these is associated with larger welfare states.

Aid

The question of whether foreign aid helps the global poor is so disputed that the study of aid effectiveness has become a field in itself within development economics. It is often hard for outsiders to make sense of the mutually contradictory findings that regularly emanate from it, [6] but there are a few general points that can be made against aid sceptics. Firstly, though many doubt whether aid has a positive influence, there is hardly any evidence that aid, taken as a whole, has been harmful.[7] Secondly, the aid effectiveness literature takes a particularly narrow view of success – economic growth is the most common metric. That aid has had a positive non-economic impact independent of its direct economic effects is relatively clear. Aid has financed successful health interventions, such as the eradication of smallpox.[8] It was instrumental in supporting the ‘green revolution’ and so feeding the world’s poorest. It has contributed to raising education levels.[9] Thirdly, though it remains controversial, there is reasonable evidence to suggest that aid has, in fact, produced economic growth.[10] This result is especially strong when we account for the fact that not all aid is intended to boost economic output.[11] Fourthly, there is the expectation that aid will become more effective as practitioners gain a better understanding of what does and does not work.[12] Thus while much of the evidence remains inconclusive, we should still expect global egalitarians to favour increased foreign aid.

A few political scientists have explored the connection between a country’s welfare state and its contribution to foreign aid. A common finding is that bigger welfare states tend to give more aid.[13] Yet this is insufficient to establish a causal connection – it does not show that countries give more aid because they have a bigger welfare state.

There are a number of ways this relationship might be explained. A third factor might cause both high welfare expenditure and high aid donation. For example, a strong commitment to egalitarianism would apply the same logic to domestic and international inequality. Confidence in the effectiveness of state intervention would also explain both. These underlying values may well be independent of existing institutions. However, it has also been suggested that political values are often conditioned by the norms embodied in existing institutions.[14] It could be that the welfare state develops an egalitarian ethos which spreads from the domestic sphere to the international.[15]

 These static background factors might help explain the relationship between the welfare state and foreign aid, but there may also be dynamic factors, brought into play by changes to welfare or aid spending. The idea that welfare and foreign aid spending could ‘crowd each other out’ is implausible – aid never constitutes more than a tiny proportion of government spending. Yet it is well established that citizens of rich countries vastly overestimate how much their governments spend on foreign aid.[16] If 25% of the US government’s budget really was spent on aid, as the average American thinks, then greater welfare spending would be much more likely to necessitate cuts to foreign aid. Thus cutting the welfare state may well make foreign aid seem more affordable, and therefore more popular.

At the same time, many people have the view that the government has obligations to look after its own people first and foremost, and that foreign aid is only acceptable once a basic standard of living is secured for all citizens. The global egalitarian may disagree violently with these values, and seek to change them, but if they are pragmatic, they must account for their existence. On this view, the less discontent there is with the adequacy of the state’s provision for its own citizens, the more support there will be for the state assisting foreigners.

The evidence offers most support for this last hypothesis. Using survey data, Noel and Therien find that support for international redistribution is strongest in those countries where there is least demand for further domestic redistribution i.e. where people are most satisfied with existing welfare institutions.[17] By contrast, the countries that most favoured more domestic redistribution tended to be against increasing foreign aid, and were often the countries with the least social protection. Noel and Therien suggest that this is because inequality is less of a concern in more equal countries with a great deal of state intervention in place.

The extreme cases of Denmark and France illustrate the point. Denmark, with the most generous welfare state and lowest inequality in the OECD, showed little appetite for further redistribution. Only 67% of respondents thought something should be done about Danish inequality – the lowest in the sample. At the same time, 89% of Danes thought more should be done to help the global poor. By contrast, those proportions were almost exactly reversed in France – 91% calling for greater domestic redistribution compared to 67% wanting more international redistribution.

The lesson that Noel and Therien draw from this is that mass publics “support international redistribution more strongly when principles of justice have been institutionalized domestically and when poverty has been tackled at home, and less strongly in the absence of such principles and achievements”.[18] Extensive domestic redistribution seems to be a popular precondition of increasing foreign aid. Global egalitarians therefore have good reason to defend the welfare state since it is necessary to maintaining public support for foreign aid.

Trade

The role of trade in poverty alleviation is another controversial issue, but most of the controversy relates to the question of whether poor countries ought to open their economies to world markets. However, this is not the relevant question for our purposes – we are concerned with the policies of rich countries. It is much less debatable that the protectionism of developed countries harms the global poor. Tariffs and subsidies keep the global poor out of lucrative markets. They depress world prices, and increase market volatility. Worse, agriculture and textiles, where poor countries have a comparative advantage, tend to be the most protected markets. Moreover, these are particularly significant sectors for employment – 70% of Africans are farmers.[19]

Various estimates have been made of the concrete cost of maintaining these barriers. Cline suggests that the removal of industrial country agricultural subsidies and protections could reduce global poverty by 8%.[20] It is estimated that a similar move for textiles would be worth $23.8 billion a year to developing countries.[21] Farmers of just one crop in one region – cotton growers in Francophone Africa – are believed to have lost $700 million as a result of artificially depressed prices caused by subsidies.[22] It has been suggested that “For every $3 that the EU gives Mozambique in aid, it takes back $1 through restrictions on access to its sugar market”.[23]

A few poor countries could be harmed by the removal of certain trade barriers, at least in the short run. For example, Mauritius benefits from its privileged access to the inflated prices of the EU sugar market.[24] Net importers of food might be squeezed by the higher prices resulting from the withdrawal of subsidies. However, those who stand to lose – those in cities and relatively industrialised economies - are vastly outnumbered by, and generally better off than, those who stand to gain.[25] It is fairly safe to say, then, that trade liberalisation in rich countries would help reduce global inequality.

Larger welfare states have been associated with trade liberalisation for three reasons.[26] Firstly, they stabilise expectations. The more dependent a person is on the market for their income – especially volatile global markets – the greater their potential losses from free trade are likely to be, and so the more risk averse they are likely to be. The safety net of the welfare state means that international trade is no longer seen as a fundamental danger to our standard of living, but as an opportunity. Secondly, the welfare state offers the possibility of compensating the ‘losers’ of globalisation. Those whose incomes fall can be assured of recouping some of their losses in the shape of state benefits. Moreover, they can also be sure of receiving support, like education and retraining. According to Peter Katzenstein, this was the conscious policy of many European countries: Sweden, Austria and the Netherlands sought to “complement their pursuit of liberalism in the international economy with a strategy of domestic compensation”.[27] Finally, the welfare state ensures a greater role in the economy for the government, allowing it to act as a counterweight to the vicissitudes of the market. In a turbulent open economy, the state sector might be seen as ‘safe’, a reliable source of employment and spending, which can step in should demand and employment fall in the rest of the economy.

Dani Rodrik offers empirical support for these theoretical claims.[28] He finds that more open economies have greater state expenditure, and that this relationship is robust, independent of income, region, size, political values and a number of other variables. Not only does the association hold cross-sectionally, it also holds over time: countries that were more open in 1960 were likely to have a bigger state sector in the next three decades. State spending is also related to the riskiness of trade: countries with more volatile terms of trade tend to have bigger welfare states. Rodrik also finds that while general government spending seemed to be the main tool in developing countries, variation in welfare spending explained most of the variation in openness among members of the OECD. According to his estimates, in the average country, a 10% increase in trade volume as a proportion of GDP is associated with an increase in welfare spending of 0.8% of GDP. There is also support for the theory that the government acts as a safe sector of the economy – a small increase in government spending tends to reduce income instability.

Rodrik only suggests that the direction of causation runs from trade openness to welfare spending, and not the other way around. In other words, he argues that more open countries are likely to develop bigger welfare states, but not necessarily that bigger welfare states are likely to become more open. However, this does not seem like an unreasonable extension of his argument and data – it is not contradicted by anything he says. The two processes certainly seem to occur close together. If welfare spending is seen as compensation for greater openness to trade, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that greater spending would leave people more willing to accept lower trade barriers, or that less spending would lead to demands to erect higher barriers. There is no reason why compensation cannot be provided in anticipation of openness. Indeed, this is sequence of events found in many countries surveyed by Molana et al: government growth precedes trade growth.[29]

There is good reason to suspect that a bigger welfare state encourages rich countries to lower the trade barriers, and so remove one of the major causes of global inequality. This gives global egalitarians further motivation to support the welfare state.

Migration

Migration can be expected to benefit the global poor in four ways. Firstly, there is the direct effect of allowing relatively poor individuals access to the opportunities of rich countries. Secondly, there are remittances - money earned by emigrants abroad and sent back to their country of origin. These have been estimated to be worth over $80 billion to developing countries, more than they received in aid.[30] Thirdly, developing economies benefit from the return of migrants, having developed skills abroad.[31] Finally, the prospect of emigration incentivises the acquisition of education and skills, even among some who will not eventually get to migrate.[32]

Against this, there is concern about ‘brain drain’ – the idea that migration leaves poor countries worse off because skilled professionals are lost at such a rate that it is impossible to replace them. Some commentators have expressed scepticism about the problem of brain drain. They argue that professionals only leave in large numbers because there is no capacity in the economy to absorb them - they cannot find jobs at home. Or that other factors, like religious persecution, motivate professionals to leave.[33]

Such a sanguine view underplays the genuine disruption caused in many countries by skilled migration. Carrington and Detragiache estimate that “the outflow of highly educated individuals reaches above 30 per cent in a number of countries in the Caribbean, Central America and Africa”.[34] Fortunately, such extreme levels of brain drain are relatively rare. Adams finds evidence that brain drain is a major problem in only a handful of Latin American countries: the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica and Mexico.[35] While the negative consequences of brain drain ought not to be underplayed, it is a serious problem for only a minority of poor countries, and so this effect should not be enough to outweigh the massive beneficial effects of migration for the global poor: in terms of the direct advantages conferred on the migrants, remittances and human capital formation.

Assuming then that greater migration is desirable from a global egalitarian standpoint, does the welfare state encourage or undermine the movement of people to rich countries? On the one hand, the welfare state offers a safety net to workers who might see their incomes compromised by foreign competition, and so encourages support for immigration. Another salient factor is that a generous welfare state might be seen as facilitating integration, making immigration more palatable. However, in more generous welfare states it is possible that people will be more worried about immigrants overburdening the system and bringing it down.

Escandell and Ceobanu have tested these hypotheses by studying the relationship between social protection and anti-immigrant sentiment.[36] Their findings suggest merit in both of them, but pro-migration attitudes seem the more powerful. For the unemployed, living in a larger welfare state is associated with greater antipathy towards immigrants. This might reflect the fact that the unemployed are uniquely vulnerable, and are most likely to view immigrants as competitors for their benefits. However, on aggregate countries with bigger welfare states tend to be more welcoming to immigrants. This result holds controlling for region, income and partisanship.

Migration is an important means of global redistribution. There is evidence that stronger welfare states encourage greater support for migration. Therefore, the global egalitarian has another reason to support the welfare state.

Conclusion

This article has sought to argue that global egalitarians have pragmatic reasons to defend the welfare state, given that public opinion seems to demand a large welfare state as a precondition of international redistribution. It should be emphasised that this is only a tactical position, while  support for global redistribution remains uncommon. All it suggests is that global egalitarians ought to pursue two simultaneous strategies: on the one hand, they should promote global redistribution; on the other, they should defend domestic redistribution. The practical difficulties of this fight on two fronts is a subject for another day. 

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[1]               Milanovic, ‘Global Income Inequality: What it is and Why it Matters (World Bank Policy ResearchWorking Paper 3865), 17; see also Milanovic, ‘How Unequal Is Today’s World?’, in his The Haves and the Have-Nots (New York: Basic Books, 2011).

[2]               White, ‘Ethics’, in Castles (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 31.

[3]               Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 154. See also Arneson, ‘Luck Egalitarianism: A Primer’, in Knight and Stemplowska (eds.), Responsibility and Distributive Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 46-7.

[4]               Bowman, ‘Looking at global inequality’, Adam Smith Institute blog, June 1 2011: <http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/international/looking-at-global-inequality >; see also Bowman, ‘Only nationalism can justify a welfare state’, Adam Smith Institute blog, May 6 2011: ; Rohac, Does Inequality Matter? (Adam Smith Institute Briefing Paper). Available at: < http://www.adamsmith.org/sites/default/files/resources/Does_Inequality_Matter_ASI.pdf>.

[5]               I make no argument here either for the claim that global equality is valuable, or that global egalitarians have no principled basis to support the welfare state. On the former, See Caney, Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). On the latter see my MPhil Thesis, which this article is adapted from: Bhattacharya, ‘Can Global Egalitarians Defend the Welfare State?’ (MPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012).

[6]               Roodman, ‘Macro Aid Effectiveness Research: A Guide for the Perplexed’ (Center for Global Development Working Paper Number 134).

[7]               Hansen and Tarp, ‘Aid Effectiveness Disputed’, Journal of International Development 12 (2000).

[8]               Levine and the What Works Working Group, Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health (Washington D.C.: Center for Global Development, 2004); Mishra and Newhouse, ‘Does health aid matter?’, Journal of Health Economics 28 (2009).

[9]               Dreher et al, ‘Does Aid for Education Educate Children? Evidence from Panel Data’, World Bank Economic Review 22 (2008).

[10]             Hansen and Tarp, op. cit.

[11]             Radelet et al, ‘Aid and Growth’, Finance and Development 42 (2005).

[12]             See, for example, Banerjee and Amsden, Making Aid Work (London: M.I.T. Press, 2007) and Collier and Dollar ‘Aid Allocation and Poverty Reduction’, European Economic Review 46 (2002).

[13]             Lumsdaine, Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime: 1949-89 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 121-2; Noel, and Therien, ‘From Domestic to International Justice: The Welfare State and Foreign Aid’, International Organization 49 (1995), 529-30; Rieger and Leibfried, Limits to Globalization: Welfare States and the World Economy (Oxford: Polity, 2003), 85.

[14]             Rothstein, Just Institutions Matter: the moral and political logic of the universal welfare state(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

[15]             Lumsdaine, op. cit.

[16]             World Public Opinion.org, ‘American Public Vastly Overestimates Amount of U.S. Foreign Aid’, Available at: <http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/670.php>.

[17]             Noel and Therien, ‘Public Opinion and Global Justice’, Comparative Political Studies 35 (2002).

[18]             Ibid., 649.

[19]             Moss and Bannon, ‘Africa and the Battle over Agricultural Protectionism’, World Policy Journal 21 (2004).

[20]             Cline, Trade Policy and Global Poverty (Washington D.C.: Center for Global Development/ Institute for International Economics, 2004), 157-68.

[21]             IMF and World Bank, Market Access for Developing Country Exports – Selected Issues (Washington: IMF, 2002), 43.

[22]             Moss and Bannon, op. cit., 58.

[23]             Oxfam, ‘Dumping on the World: How EU sugar policies hurt poor countries’, Oxfam Briefing Paper 61.

[24]             Hoekman et al, ‘Reducing Agricultural Tariffs versus Domestic Support: What’s More Important for Developing Countries’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2918.

[25]             Hoekman, op. cit.; Cline, op. cit., 273-5.

[26]             Rieger and Liebfried, op. cit.

[27]             Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 47.

[28]             Rodrik, ‘Why Do More Open Economies Have Bigger Governments?’, Journal of Political Economy 106 (1998).

[29]             Molana et al, ‘On the Causal Relationship between Trade-Openness and Government-Size: Evidence from OECD Countries’, International Journal of Public Policy 7 (2011).

[30]             Adams and Page, ‘International Migration, Remittances and Poverty in Developing Countries’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3179.

[31]             Constant and Massey, ‘Return Migration by German Guestworkers: Neoclassical versus New Economic Theories’, International Migration 40 (2002).

[32]             Stark et al, ‘A brain gain with a brain drain’, Economics Letters 45 (1997).

[33]             Dowty, Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of Movement (London: Yale University Press, 1987).

[34]             Carrington and Detragiache, ‘How Big is the Brain Drain?’, IMF Working Paper 98/102.

[35]             Adams, ‘International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3069.

[36]             Escandell and Ceobanu, ‘Anti-Immigrant Sentiment and Welfare Regimes in Europe’, Centre for Comparative Immigration Studies Working Paper 178.

This article was originally published in the Oxford Left Review Issue 7

Why give aid to countries with space programmes?

The British government’s Department for International Development’s (DFID) aid budget for the next five years, released last week, has received predictable criticism from a xenophobic rightwing press. While the outrage that foreigners should be getting more money at a time of domestic budget cuts was to be expected, the focus has narrowed on India’s position as an aid recipient. The argument is that a country with nuclear arms, a space programme, more billionaires than Britain and a growth rate approaching 10% doesn’t need or deserve British aid. Stephen Glover’s article in the Daily Mail is fairly typical of the kind of the concerns raised.

The argument that India is too rich to need British aid is either disingenuous or incredibly stupid. Glover claims it is likely “there is an outdated sense that it is our duty to disburse funds to the supposedly less fortunate — rather like an impoverished parent continuing to subsidise children who have grown much wealthier, and are more than capable of getting by on their own” (I’m going to be charitable and assume that Glover doesn’t mean that the notion of helping the actually less fortunate – as opposed to the merely ‘supposedly’ less fortunate – is outdated). Yet India’s growth rate is clearly from a relatively low base: if my income of £10 000 is growing at 10% per year, and your £100 000 income is stagnating, it’s still going to be a long time before my income catches yours (25 years if my maths is correct).

Glover makes a lot of the fact that “According to one measure used by the World Bank, in 2009 India was the fourth- largest economy in the world, significantly bigger than the United Kingdom, which was in sixth place”. I can’t be bothered to go check where he gets this from, but in terms of 2009 GDP, the World Bank has India in 11th place, comfortably behind the UK. Even if the two economies are of comparable size, India’s wealth is shared between a population over twenty times that of Britain’s. Accounting for the size of each country by using the more relevant index of GDP per capita, most measures have India outside the world’s hundred wealthiest nations. Glover does acknowledge this, but continuing to refer to the country as the “fourth- largest economy in the world” hardly presses this point.

More interesting, though, is the apparent claim that since “Arguably India should be spending less on defence, and nothing on its space programme, and be diverting more funds to the alleviation of poverty”, it should not receive British aid. I think this is a serious challenge to those who favour giving aid to India, and as such needs to be addressed. The best I can come up with is this analogy:

Suppose you see your poverty-stricken neighbour’s children going about undernourished and badly clothed. You have the means and the will to help them, and so resolve to buy them some clothes and food. However, you notice that your neighbour, despite struggling to look after the kids, is still paying for a satellite TV subscription. Should you still offer the aid?

There are a number of relevant considerations here. Obviously there is a need for sensitivity. You wouldn’t want to embarrass your neighbour or make them feel inadequate. But suppose you know they would be grateful. Most people would disapprove of the decision to maintain the TV subscription. But surely it would be unfair to penalise the children for the irresponsibility of their parents.

We might believe that if the neighbour doesn’t receive help they will be so embarrassed by the state of their children that they will cancel the subscription. If this is the case, then we are not actually doing the children any favours by giving them the gifts. Rather, their parents will continue to keep up their satellite subscription with the money they would otherwise have been shamed into spending on their kids. In effect, we are paying for the satellite subscription.

In development parlance, this is the problem of fungibility: even if aid is targeted directly at the poor, it may simply allow the government to divert the money they would otherwise have spent on the poor to other projects, like a space programme. Fungibility seems to me to be the only argument against giving the aid, either to the TV watching family, or to the Indian government.

I’m sceptical as to whether fungibility genuinely is a problem in this case, as it suggests there is a minimum threshold of poverty relief that the Indian government is motivated to supply, and that if this is met, however it is met, they do not care about poverty any longer. Given the uncertainty, I suspect it is best to just take the risk.

An objection to this analogy is that India is a democracy. Its citizens aren’t therefore ruled in the same way as children are by their parents. The situation is more like an impoverished group of adults communally agreeing to put satellite TV above nourishing food. We should therefore respect their decisions. As Glover says, “the country is a democracy, and its government will be held to account for the decisions it makes. It is hardly our business if India wants to spend so much money on a space programme”. Even if this were so, there would still be a case for paternalistic intervention.

However, this seems to take the mandate conception of democracy too literally. This view implies that either by voting for a government proposing a certain set of policies or by having the ability to eject a government whose policies they disapprove of, an electorate consents and is responsible for all that government does. This is simplistic at the best of times, given the lack of choice, vagaries of electoral mechanisms, absence of full information, and profusion of cross-cutting issues. In this case it implies something absurd: that the Indian people, so many of whom are desperately poor, given the choice between reducing poverty and starting a space programme, opted for the latter.

Admittedly, this isn’t Glover’s view – he acknowledges that the government’s choice may well be out of step with popular opinion. Hence his emphasis on the government being held ‘accountable’. Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t understand why this is an argument against giving aid to India. It could take the same form as the ‘mandate’ argument, which his talk of ‘India’ as a unified actor deciding to pursue a space programme implies. Or it could be the claim that British aid could lead to the Indian government not being held accountable for its decisions. I don’t see how this follows. Surely the Indian people will see that the money spent on a space programme could have been directed towards poverty relief, and cast their votes accordingly, independent of what DFID does. If the suggestion is that DFID will do so well in fighting Indian poverty that the space programme will then seem reasonable, that is clearly preposterous.

I’m not sure if this deals with all the problems of giving aid to India, but I think it might be a helpful way of thinking about the problem.

Charity Begins At Home?

Simon Heffer is an odious man with unpleasant beliefs (pro-death penalty, pro-section 28, anti-abortion and divorce), the sort of person who drains me of hope for humanity in general and this society in particular. Yet in his controversial attack on the government’s decision to ringfence the aid budget, Heffer surpassed himself, managing to dispirit me twice in four words: “charity begins at home”. The obvious sentiment behind that statement, the parochial idea that British people come first, is depressing enough. The insidious notion that foreign aid is “charity” – that it is not fulfilment of a moral obligation, but an act of superegoratory benevolence, above and beyond the call of duty, compounds the effect.

The idea that charity begins at home is often alluded to, but rarely examined or defended. It is far from obvious what it means and why it should be the case. I can think of three interpretations and justifications of starting our charity at home. The simplest, and most compelling way to take the idea is as an exhortation to be consistent in our dealings with all people near or far. I imagine this as a rebuke to the absent-minded and insensitive philanthropist, who cares deeply for the plight of strangers, but who is unpleasant or cruel in their dealings with those around them: for instance, someone who gives lots of money to charity, but who bullies their family or colleagues. Telling them that charity begins at home is a way of reminding them that the people they see on a day-to-day basis are humans worthy of the same consideration as those that they seek to help.

A second reason why charity begins at home is because of our greater ability to help those we know best. Not only is it easier for me to help my brother than a stranger, I am more likely to be successful in helping him. There are a number of reasons for this, including opportunity (I see my brother more than I see most strangers) and specific knowledge (I know better what he wants, needs and likes). Indeed, the extension of this logic suggests that this sort of moral man-marking, with all looking out for those immediately around them is the solution to many ethical problems (see Frank Jackson for a statement of such reasoning).

Thirdly, some people think charity should begin at home because it is natural and desirable that we should give greater consideration to some people than others. We should be nicer, more generous and have stronger moral obligations to our family or our countrymen simply because they are our family or our countrymen. This is not an argument I have any sympathy for, but to go into further detail would draw us into a deep and strongly contested debate I do not wish to visit here. Suffice to say, I have yet to come across an argument to shake me from my presumption that all humans are morally equivalent.

It may seem as though I am ducking the issue: surely Heffer’s key point is that Britain ought to look after its own in these troubled times, and that is precisely the issue I am refusing to dispute. But even if we concede all three of these interpretations of the idea that charity begins at home, it still does not mean that Britain has no moral obligations to the rest of the world. For even if charity begins at home, there is no reason for it to end there.

The first version of charity begins at home is satisfied merely if we give all humans equal consideration: this clearly does not support the preferential treatment for Britons that Heffer seeks. The second version only supports Heffer if the British government can do more good in Britain than abroad. But the fact of the matter is that the most dire need and the most easily alleviated suffering on the planet is to be found far away from Britain. Heffer’s supposed concern for the vulnerability of the worst-off in British society at this trying time is laudable, but let’s get a sense of perspective: a person on jobseeker’s allowance is still within the richest 20% of humanity. (For a sense of perspective as humbling as the Total Perspective Vortex see this)

So much for the first two versions of the charity begins at home thesis, but what of the third, that it is legitimate to look out for our countrymen above others? Again, the principle needs clearing up. If it is taken to mean that we should care only for our countrymen and care nothing for foreigners, then Heffer is vindicated. Yet this appears to be too callous even for Heffer, who accepts that emergency aid for natural disasters is legitimate, and so betrays some concern for others.

This implies that the needs of Britons can be traded off against foreigners. I presume that Heffer believes that if natural disasters of equal magnitude hit Britain and, say, Kenya at the same time, it would be inappropriate to divert resources from the British relief effort to the Kenyan one. But presumably if the UK government had a choice between buying all its citizens Ferraris and aiding Kenyans, it should do the latter. This suggests there is a point, somewhere, where the good that can be done abroad is so much greater than the good that can be done domestically as to legitimate aid. Heffer clearly thinks Britain has not reached that point. I would disagree, and I find it hard to conceive how anyone that has seen the global income distribution can fail to disagree with Heffer.

Next to this, my objection to Heffer’s reference to charity might seem like a semantic quibble. However, it is indicative of a deeper problem regarding the framing of the question of foreign aid. I do not object to the concept of ‘charity’ – in its original sense, it is entirely positive, representing consideration and care towards others. However, in its modern sense, charity has come to represent supererogatory action: good but not required, ‘beyond the call of duty’. That this is Heffer’s meaning is clear from his branding of DFID as a “£7 billion luxury”.

Clement Attlee accurately summarised the problem of seeing redistribution of wealth as charity: “it tends to make the charitable think that he has done his duty by giving away some trifling sum, his conscience is put to sleep and he takes no trouble to consider the social problem any further”. The relationship between the global rich and the global poor is akin to that of the rich and poor in early twentieth century Britain. The rich feel precious little responsibility towards the poor, who expect, at best, handouts dependent on capricious goodwill.

The solution then was the Welfare state. I have no idea what the global equivalent is. However, there are a few key features of our domestic relationships that need to be carried over onto the global stage. The rich must begin to see aid to the poor as a moral imperative, not as an optional extra for ethical brownie points. The poor must be seen to have entitlements, which it is the responsibility of the rich to fulfil.

Unfortunately, that seems a long way off, and Heffer’s mode of thinking still dominates. But the only way to move forward is to challenge it at every turn.