Did USAID really save 92 million lives?
California Rep. Ro Khanna (D) said last month that Elon Musk had "possibly sentenced to death" 4.5 million children by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Musk called him a liar, threatened to sue, and suggested he belonged in prison.
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Khanna was citing a 2025 study in The Lancet that claimed USAID prevented 91,839,663 deaths between 2001 and 2021 and projected more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030 if the cuts held. That study was cited in articles by NPR, the BBC, the Associated Press, NBC, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.
None of these news outlets picked up on The Lancet study's absurdity. The New Yorker's legendary fact-checkers didn't catch it, nor did the journal's editors or the paper's peer reviewers.
As I explained when I first wrote about the Lancet study for Reason in July of last year, with some basic arithmetic and a bit of common sense, you can see why the study's topline figures are nonsense. Just put the claim that nearly 92 million people were saved by USAID between 2001 and 2021 into perspective: During this period, the world's total death rate fell substantially. If the death rate prior to 2001 had remained steady for the next 20 years, about 79 million additional people would have died, according to data from the United Nations.
So how could USAID have saved 92 million lives? That's more than 100 percent of the global mortality decline, meaning that not only was USAID responsible for saving all 79 million people who didn't die thanks to the fall in the total death rate, but it saved an additional 13 million who otherwise would have died if not for USAID's charitable efforts.
You might think killing USAID was reckless and cruel. You might think foreign aid saves lives, as I do. Even so, you should advocate for a scientifically sound analysis that takes an honest look at the evidence, even if it's a messy picture that doesn't produce a headline-grabbing finding.
When you hear an outrageous statistic, don't be afraid to apply some basic math. The person spouting that eye-popping number is probably betting that you won't bother.
Producer: Aaron Brown
Video editor: Cody Huff
Graphics: Gustavo Martinez-Schmidt
Audio production: Ian Keyser
---
Join Wrong Number—enter to win the book ? https://reason.pub/4x6bBR1
---
Khanna was citing a 2025 study in The Lancet that claimed USAID prevented 91,839,663 deaths between 2001 and 2021 and projected more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030 if the cuts held. That study was cited in articles by NPR, the BBC, the Associated Press, NBC, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.
None of these news outlets picked up on The Lancet study's absurdity. The New Yorker's legendary fact-checkers didn't catch it, nor did the journal's editors or the paper's peer reviewers.
As I explained when I first wrote about the Lancet study for Reason in July of last year, with some basic arithmetic and a bit of common sense, you can see why the study's topline figures are nonsense. Just put the claim that nearly 92 million people were saved by USAID between 2001 and 2021 into perspective: During this period, the world's total death rate fell substantially. If the death rate prior to 2001 had remained steady for the next 20 years, about 79 million additional people would have died, according to data from the United Nations.
So how could USAID have saved 92 million lives? That's more than 100 percent of the global mortality decline, meaning that not only was USAID responsible for saving all 79 million people who didn't die thanks to the fall in the total death rate, but it saved an additional 13 million who otherwise would have died if not for USAID's charitable efforts.
You might think killing USAID was reckless and cruel. You might think foreign aid saves lives, as I do. Even so, you should advocate for a scientifically sound analysis that takes an honest look at the evidence, even if it's a messy picture that doesn't produce a headline-grabbing finding.
When you hear an outrageous statistic, don't be afraid to apply some basic math. The person spouting that eye-popping number is probably betting that you won't bother.
Producer: Aaron Brown
Video editor: Cody Huff
Graphics: Gustavo Martinez-Schmidt
Audio production: Ian Keyser
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