What do citizens of European countries think about foreign aid and development cooperation? Using a new dataset covering France, Germany, Great Britain and the US, Felipe Torres, Soomin Oh, Paolo Morini, Jennifer Hudson, David Hudson and Molly Anders show that concern for poverty abroad persists but is sensitive to political shocks and competing crises.
The 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Agenda looms, even as the United Nations and civil society express concern (and in some cases alarm) that its goals feel increasingly out of reach.
Meanwhile, European leaders have joined a commitment to mobilise $300 billion in global climate finance by 2035, even as their constituents – responding to a rising tide of populist rhetoric – seem to lean inward. Unable to ignore this tension, charities, NGOs and policymakers are all faced with the same existential question: do the public still believe in global solidarity?
At the Development Engagement Lab (DEL), our research is examining this question. Drawing on five years of surveys in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, we track how the public understand, value and act on global development, resulting in a wealth of insights, many hinted at below, while others are ready and available for researchers to mine.
DEL data is free to use and available under our mandate to produce data for the public good, and so this dataset in particular represents an opportunity for researchers from a range of fields – from political science to sociology to psychology – to draw out a range of novel insights for existing or new research.
Public support for aid is fragile, but not disappearing
One clear insight from DEL data is that support for foreign aid cannot be taken for granted. Across our surveys, we find publics are consistently concerned about poverty abroad. Yet concern does not always translate into backing for government aid budgets.
In Great Britain, for instance, support for maintaining or increasing aid levels has been dropping noticeably since 2022, after an uptick in June 2021 when the government cut its aid spending target from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income. The overall decline is consistent across other European donors in the sample, namely Germany and France.
Figure 1: Support for foreign aid and development in selected countries
Note: Figures reflect percentage of respondents agreeing their country should keep or increase current expenditure levels. Data are weighted to be nationally representative.
In the United States, the level of support has been stable between 50% and 60% but is highly politically polarised (30% of Trump voters vs 80% of Harris voters in the 2024 presidential election). The lesson? Concern about poverty is widespread, but it is fragile, conditional and easily shaped by domestic politics and global crises.
Global crises shift attention and crowd out other priorities
Because the DEL dataset spans a turbulent half-decade, it allows us to see how major events reshape public opinion. When the post-COVID cost-of-living crisis struck, support for aid fell as citizens turned inward, prioritising household recovery and domestic concerns. Similarly, concerns over more salient issues like war, conflict and terrorism, migration and refugees, and economic crises, push concern for longer-term issues, most notably climate change, further down the agenda.
In this context, DEL’s 2022 sandbox survey in Great Britain tested a specific trade-off: would people redirect aid and donations from humanitarian crises in Africa or the Middle East to support Ukraine? Many respondents said yes. This illustrates a broader tension revealed across the dataset: the public frequently rally to topical, high-profile crises, but sustaining attention and resources for enduring development goals – from climate action to gender equality – is far harder.
A wealth of research possibilities
The comprehensive scope of the dataset enables researchers to address diverse questions across multiple disciplines beyond the findings mentioned. The dataset can be used to answer questions from an array of disciplines and topics, from political psychology (e.g. “does emotional response to government aid spending predict behavioural engagement better than rational cost-benefit calculations?”), to democracy and accountability (e.g. “do citizens who feel economically left behind punish the government in elections for supporting overseas aid?”) and political economy (e.g. “how do different welfare states affect citizen preferences over domestic versus international redistribution?”).
The longitudinal nature of the dataset helps answer questions of change, such as what the drivers of stability vs change are in public attitudes towards global poverty and development over time, and how generational differences in engagement patterns evolve. The experimental component of the dataset also allows for testing specific theoretical mechanisms (e.g. “does acknowledging the presence of corruption help or hinder public support for overseas aid?”).
A unique and comprehensive dataset
Between 2019 and 2024, we carried out 91 surveys, resulting in 270,829 observations from 130,286 respondents.
The project combined three types of surveys: annual panel surveys, which followed the same individuals over six years to track how their attitudes changed; biannual tracker surveys, which are shorter surveys capturing shifts in public opinion more frequently; and responsive sandbox surveys, which explored pressing global issues in depth, from climate change and COVID-19 to global gender equality, feminist development policy and the war in Ukraine.
What distinguishes this dataset is the breadth and depth of variables it offers. It captures attitudes: concern about global poverty; preferred levels of government aid spending; whether aid should serve national interests or altruistic goals; perceived costs and benefits of aid; trust in governments and NGOs; and views on migration, economic outlook and international cooperation.
It captures behaviours: ten indicators of engagement, from donating to international NGOs, volunteering and signing petitions to lobbying elected representatives or sharing information online.
It captures segmentation: using those behavioural measures, DEL groups people into six audience types, namely Negatively Engaged, Totally Disengaged, Marginally Engaged, Transactionally Engaged, Purposively Engaged and Fully Engaged, providing a nuanced map of public engagement.
And finally, it captures context-specific modules: experimental designs such as conjoint and list experiments to test how different frames, messages and project characteristics influence preferences.
We have thus created a dataset that is both broad and deep, offering researchers, NGOs and policymakers the ability to look at long-term trends while also examining responses to specific events.
Overseas aid is contested now more than ever, and the public’s views will shape what is possible in the years ahead. By bringing together five years of rich, cross-national survey data, we provide a rare, detailed picture of how citizens think about and engage with global development.
These data show that concern for poverty abroad persists but is sensitive to political shocks and competing crises, and that engagement is varied but not static. As governments, NGOs and researchers look toward the future of aid, this open dataset offers an evidence base for understanding and strengthening the public foundations of global solidarity.
For more information, see the authors’ accompanying paper in Scientific Data. The complete collection of 91 surveys is publicly available via Harvard Dataverse.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: © European Union, 2023
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