Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service with me Ben Carter.

Last month, US President Donald Trump gave his second address to the United Nations General

Assembly in New York.

Some of his comments raised eyebrows.

The United States is the world's largest giver in the world by far, a foreign aid.

But few give anything to us.

Is prompted some lawlessness to email in with their questions.

Is there an agreed definition of foreign aid?

And also which countries the largest giver per capita?

And is foreign aid per capita the best way to measure how generous a country is?

Good questions and plenty to talk about.

Before we take a look at the numbers, let's deal with the definition of foreign aid.

The organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, created a strict

definition of aid in the 1960s.

They call it ODA or official development assistance.

Dr. Brad Parks is Executive Director of AIDATA, a research lab at William & Mary University

in Virginia in the United States.

He explains what three conditions need to be met for aid to classify as ODA.

It has to be a grant or a below market rate loan from a government agency in the donor

country.

The second condition is that it must be focused on the promotion of economic development

and welfare in the recipient country.

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