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Increase or decrease development aid? Evolution of opinions in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States

Published 11 April 2024 in Surveys

In partnership with University College London (UCL) and Birmingham University, Focus 2030 is conducting a research-action program to analyze the perceptions, attitudes, behaviors and feelings of citizens on international solidarity issues in four countries: France, Germany, United States and United Kingdom.

This research programme Development Engagement Lab (DEL), aims at providing various actors in charge of development issues (NGOs, foundations, think-tanks, ministries, public institutions, international organizations) with data to enable them to better understand citizens’ expectations while they implement their communication, mobilization and advocacy activities.

Within the DEL project, the same 10 question survey is conducted three times a year in order to measure how much opinions evolve about official development assistance (ODA) in the four DEL countries.


When measuring respondents’ opinions on whether official development assistance (ODA) should be increased, maintained, or decreased in the four countries surveyed by the DEL research project, we note that since 2019, French people are more likely than the Germans, Americans, and British to want their governments to increase the amount of money allocated to ODA in order to support development in the poorest countries.

According to the data collected in the USA, although one can observe an upward and/or downward fluctuation since the begining of the measurement in September 2019, opinions remain more or less the same since January 2022. It turns out that in January 2024, support for an increase of ODA has become approximately the same in France (27%) and the USA (25%).

Support for ODA in the UK has been relatively stable since September 2022, while between January 2022 and January 2024, opinions in favor of an increase of ODA fell sharply among German respondents, with a loss of 10 percentage points between January 2022 and January 2024.


This data comes from our survey conducted by the YouGov Institute and piloted by the research team at University College London and the University of Birmingham as part of the project Development Engagement Lab which measures the evolution of opinions and behaviors on issues of international solidarity in four countries.

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