NYU professor challenges ‘patently absurd’ claim USAID cuts will kill 14 million

It is “patently absurd” to claim President Donald Trump’s defunding of the United States Agency for International Development will kill 14 million people by 2030, a New York University statistician says.

Professor Aaron Brown recently spoke to The College Fix about a widely-cited study from University of California Los Angeles Professor James Macinko that warned about the harms of defunding USAID. Soon after taking office, President Trump defunded the agency. The D.C. Court of Appeals upheld the decision last week.

“Projections suggest that ongoing deep funding cuts— combined with the potential dismantling of the agency— could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4·5 million deaths among children younger than 5 years,” The Lancet study predicted.

The study further attributed 91 million lives saved to USAID, which drew criticism from Professor Brown.

“The study’s claim—that USAID is responsible for the entire reduction in worldwide mortality from 2001 to 2021, plus an additional 13 million lives—is patently absurd,” Brown told The Fix via email. He also criticized the research in an essay for Reason.

Brown says the problems lie in the methodology used by the study’s researchers.

“The authors chose a study design that baked in the conclusion that USAID was responsible for all reduction in worldwide mortality,” Brown said. 

“Using their same design, they could have used anything that increased over time…and it would have shown up as responsible for all decline in global mortality,” he said.

Additionally, Brown pointed out that five years of data are missing from the study.

“The authors tossed out data for five of their 21 study years, the five years that go against their conclusion,” Brown told The Fix.

The professor also noted that, rather than using countries as the unit of analysis, the study focused on the years in which those countries received aid.

“There is a lag between the time USAID cuts a check and we get changes on the ground in a country,” Brown said. “Looking only at mortality reductions in the year the check was cut misses most of the effect of aid.”

The choice of countries included in the study also raises concerns, according to Brown.

“They asserted without any evidence that the USAID caused the mortality declines—even though the mortality declines happened in all countries—and most of the declines were in countries with little or no USAID,” Brown said.

“The least developed countries that were the main focus of USAID saw a mortality increase of 8 million lives.”

The Fix reached out to Macinko and the study’s primary contact, Professor Davide Rasella, to ask for a response to the criticism and what they hoped to accomplish with the findings. They have not responded to an email or follow-up in the past two weeks. The Fix also left a voicemail with Macinko but has yet to hear back in the past week.

The June study came out following the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle USAID after significant cuts earlier this year. 

In the announcement, the U.S. Department of State said the agency “long strayed from its original mission” and failed in “advancing American interests abroad.”

As of July 1, USAID’s remaining programs were taken over by the State Department. 

The study’s findings have been used in various reports by the mainstream media. This includes articles published by NPR and the Associated Press.

In an interview with NPR, Professor Macinko explained the purpose of the study.

“What we really tried to draw out was, how did the funding from USAID influence a set of outcomes?” Macinko told NPR.

“We were most interested in looking at mortality, to really be able to quantify the impact of these investments,” Macinko said. 

Macinko told NPR that he and his team were “surprised” by their findings. 

“When we saw that number [91 million], we were indeed surprised,” Macinko said in the interview.

While Macinko did not respond to inquiries, another infectious disease researcher provided a defense of his methods.

Boston University Professor Brooke Nichols, who works as an infectious disease mathematical modeller and health economist, backed Macinko’s research, but said that the study’s projections “carry greater uncertainty.”

“I do think the study’s findings accurately reflect the direct and indirect impact of USAID on global deaths,” Nichols told The Fix via email.

“The retrospective analysis is quite robust. However, the projections of future deaths carry greater uncertainty,” Nichols said.