Former aid recipients have become valuable trading partners. For example, U.S. exports to Poland have been expanding an average of 11 percent annually since our aid program began in 1990. Four out of ten people didn't have enough food to eat. Three-quarters of the world's population didn't have access to clean drinking water. Life expectancy, in 1968 was only 50 years.
Fewer people are hungry-roughly one out of six.
Three times as many people have access to clean water. Child mortality has been halved, and life expectancy is up ten years. Of course many, many challenges remain. Central Africa and Haiti continue to defy solution and will require significant humanitarian assistance for the foreseeable future. But the fact is that despite the setbacks, much progress has been made in improving the human condition in the last 50 years-since the idea of foreign assistance took root.