But don’t be misled. According to a report by Oxfam International in England, the world’s richest countries donate an average of $80 per person to eradicate poverty, the equivalent of a weekly cup of coffee. Even more disturbing, the wealthier these countries have become, the less they have given in aid.

The disturbing findings are found in a recent report titled, “Paying the Price: Why rich countries must invest now in the war on poverty.” It observes: “Rich countries today give half as much, as a proportion of their income, as they did in the 1960s. In 1960-65, rich countries spent on average 0.48 percent of their combined national incomes on aid. By 1980-85 they were spending just 0.34 percent. By 2003, the average had dropped as low as 0.24 percent.”

Wealthy nations realize that it’s in their best interest, as well as that of the affected countries, to help eliminate global poverty. In 2000, the leaders and heads of state of 189 countries signed a Millennium Declaration that established a series of goals to reduce poverty by 2015. The key targets were to: 1) Halve the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day as well as the proportion suffering from hunger by 2015, 2) Ensure that all children complete primary school by 2025, 3) Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005 and in all levels of education by 2015; 4) Reduce the mortality rate of children under 5 by two-thirds by 2015; 5) Reduce by three-quarters, the ratio of women dying in childbirth by 2015; 6) Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of HIV/AIDS and other major diseases by 2015; 7) Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation and 8) Develop a non-discriminatory and rules-based trading system, provide more generous aid and deal comprehensively with the debt problem.

“A vital aim of these goals is that the poorest countries will have the finance needed to achieve them,” the report notes. “To do this, rich countries have promised to provide a very small fraction of their wealth – just 0.7 percent of their national income – and to improve the way in which they give aid, to make it work best for poverty reduction, and to end the burden of debt which means that low-income countries must pay out $100 million every day to their creditors. For rich country donors, making this finance available is not simply an act of charity: it is both a moral obligation and a matter of justice…”

Those are noble goals, but like many noble goals, the rhetoric exceeds reality.

“…Progress has been unforgivably slow,” the report observes. “Only one goal – halving the income poverty – has any chance of being met, but even this is due to progress in just a handful of countries. The first target – enrolling all girls in primary and secondary school by 2005 – is certain to be missed. The poorest people will pay the price for this failure. If the world fails to act to meet even these minimal goals, and current trends are allowed to continue: 45 million more children will die between now and 2005, 247 million more people in the sub-Saharan Africa will be living on less than $1 a day in 2015, 97 million more children will still be out of school in 2015 and 53 million more people in the world will lack proper sanitation facilities.”

Although the UN established the goal of allocating 0.7 percent of national income for poverty reduction in 1970, only five of the 22 major donors – none from the seven most powerful nations – are meeting the goal. Donating just 0.14 percent, the United States is the least generous donor in terms of aid as a proportion of its wealth. At the current rate, the U.S. will not reach the 0.7 percent goal until 2040.

Before we dislocate our elbow while patting ourselves on the back for the way we’ve reacted to the tsunami crisis, let’s rise to the challenge of reducing world poverty when the international spotlight is not on a graphic disaster.