Development economists were dismayed - though not surprised - to hear Barack Obama scale back his pledge to increase aid to poor countries as a result of the current U.S. financial crisis if elected. If history is any guide, this is at least one promise he’s likely to keep. As David Roodman of the Center for Global Development explains in a recent article, four donor countries - Japan, Finland, Norway, and Sweden - have had financial crises since 1970, and in each case aid has dropped significantly.

In the U.S., much more development aid is channeled through private philanthropy, but there’s every reason to expect that this will similarly take a big hit from the current economic downturn (see our recent op-ed in Forbes for a discussion of how the financial crisis will impact philanthropy more generally, and what to do about it).

And most troublingly, banking problems in the U.S. have already had massive ripple effects throughout the donor world (you can bet that Iceland isn’t going to have much left in the state coffers for helping anyone, let alone themselves), putting aid budgets elsewhere on the budgetary chopping block in years to come.

All this will add up to less aid just as we head into a global recession, which is exactly when the world’s poor will need it most.

-Ray