How does the CDI handle the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?
1. Who designs the Commitment to Development Index (CDI)?
For the first few years, the CDI was maintained by the Center for Global Development and published in Foreign Policy magazine; however, starting in 2007, CGD became the sole responsible party for maintaining and publishing the index. CGD staff and outside collaborators designed and collected data for the seven individual components. David Roodman is manager and chief architect. He also designed the aid component and, in 2005, revised the trade component, building on the work of CGD Senior Fellow William Cline. The collaborators are Theodore Moran of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service (investment), Kimberly Hamilton of the Migration Policy Institute and Jeanne Batalova (migration), B. Lindsay Lowell and Victoria Carro of Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration (also migration), Amy Cassara and Daniel Prager of the World Resources Institute (environment), Michael O'Hanlon and Adriana Lins de Albuquerque of the Brookings Institution (security), Jason Alderwick formerly of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Mark Stoker of Global Defense Budget (also Security), and Keith Maskus of the University of Colorado at Boulder (technology).
2. Why are these 22 countries scored?
Originally comprised of 21 countries, the Index has included South Korea since 2008. These 22 countries are the richest, most developed countries in the world, leaving out tiny nations such as Iceland and Luxembourg. Along with Luxembourg, they constitute the full membership of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC), which is the official organization of aid donors. These countries have the most potential to help poor countries build prosperity, good government, and security.
3. How did you decide what to include in the CDI?
Helping poor countries is about more than aid. We chose major policy areas that support the development of poorer countries and for which reasonable data was available. The list of policy areas is: aid, which funds initiatives such as child vaccinations and new roads; trade, which gives industries in poor countries access to larger markets and creates jobs; investment, which can be a source of capital and good management practices; migration, which lets workers seek higher-paying jobs in rich countries and send earnings back home; environment, which underscores the point that rich and poor nations are tied together by shared resources; security, which is a prerequisite for development; and technology, since innovation is a critical factor in development.
4. What “poor countries” are CDI countries helping?
The CDI measures support for all low and middle income countries as classified by the World Bank. If you want to see how much rich countries are helping specific regions, such as Africa, go to the map-based exploration tool on the CDI home page and use the “Results with respect to:” menu. You can choose from six regions, which are also defined by the World Bank: East Asia & Pacific, Europe & Central Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
5. Why publish the Commitment to Development Index (CDI)?
Rich-country policies matter.
Much attention is given to what developing countries can do to foster poverty alleviation and growth at home. The Index highlights what rich countries do to help or hinder development abroad.
Development is about more than aid.
Aid is important, but trade, migration, investment, environment, security, and technology policies influence development too.
Aid is about more than money.
How donor countries design their aid programs is as important as how much aid they give.
Coherence matters.
The Index penalizes countries that give with one hand (through aid or investment) but take away with the other (through trade or pollution).
Partnerships are powerful.
Facing global challenges that no one nation can handle alone, the Index rewards countries that deliver aid through multilateral arrangements, sign global environmental agreements, and participate in internationally sanctioned security operations.
No one is perfect.
Almost all countries score below average in at least one area and most are below average in at least three.
6. Did the way the CDI is computed change much between 2010 and 2011?
There was just one methodological change in the calculation of the CDI in 2011. The indicator on actual imports from developing countries, in the trade component, now incorporates weights that most reward imports from the poorest countries. This brings the indicator more in line with the immigration flow indicator in the migration component and the selectivity indicator in the aid component (although the latter also weights according to governance in the receiving country). The data on tariffs was updated through 2007.
7. Why do the 2003–10 scores differ from the ones published in those years?
The CDI formulas and data have improved steadily since the first edition in 2003. Because of the changes in method, the latest scores are not directly comparable to those published last year or the year before. If a country’s aid score climbs, say, that could be because of improvement in the measurement rather than improvement in what is measured. The 2003-10 results featured on the website are back-calculations--applications of this year's methodology to previous years' data. They allow fair comparisons over time. The original scores are available, however, in the previous-year technical papers and spreadsheets on the Inside the Index page.
8. Where can I find rankings from previous years?
Rankings change every year because country policies change and because the methodology for calculating the CDI evolves. Every year we back-calculate the latest methodology to earlier years in order to allow fair comparisons over time. For historical rankings based on the current methodology, and ones based on the methodology of the day, see here.
9. Should the "winners" be proud?
Yes and no. We want to inspire a race to the top, so "winners" should be proud of their achievements. Yet there is room for improvement in all rich countries.
10. How did you decide how to weight the components? Why aren't aid and trade given more weight?
It is difficult to know whether a one-point increase in a country's aid score would be better for development than a one-point increase in its trade score. And the potential benefits--perhaps a new school in Malawi, or more jobs for wheat farmers in Argentina--are hard to compare to one another. Therefore, we chose equal weighting. All seven areas matter.
11. Why don't countries with large economies like Japan and Germany rank higher since they give more aid and import more goods from developing countries than many other donors? Why do small countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands rank so well instead?
The Index assesses policy effort rather than impact. Japan and Germany are among the larger donors when it comes to absolute amounts of aid, but they are less generous than some smaller countries once the size of their economies is taken into account. The top-scoring countries give a lot of aid in proportion to gross domestic product and/or have relatively low trade barriers and/or generate relatively little pollution, and so on.
12. Why does Austria score over 10 on migration? Why does the US do the same on security?
Each component of the CDI combines many numbers into a single score, placing that score on a standard scale, so that an average score in 2008, the reference year, equals 5. This makes it easy to see that Japan's policies, for instance, are above-average on technology (with a 6.3 in 2011), but not as strong on security (2.0) by the standards of Japan's peers. If a country is twice as good as average, it scores a 10, and if it's more than twice as good, it scores above 10. That happened to Austria on migration. The opposite is true for the environment and trade components. Scores on environmental pollution and trade barriers start at 10 (no emissions or barriers) and go down from there. Just as a country can power through the 10-point ceiling by giving more aid or admitting more immigrants, it can break through the floor of zero by emitting excessive pollution or imposing high tariffs. In fact, the benchmark averages are from scores in 2008. Using a fixed benchmark allows proper score tracking over time.
13. Where do the data come from?
Most of the data come from official sources such as the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations, or from academic researchers. CGD and its collaborators also collect information country by country for parts of the aid, migration and investment components. For more information please see the CDI technical paper.
14. Over what time frame is support for development measured?
The Index aims to measure support for development using the most recent available data as the best indicator of current policies. Most data are for 2009 or later. Contributions to humanitarian military interventions fluctuate considerably from year to year: in that case, we use multiyear averages as the best indicators of countries' long-term ability and willingness to contribute to internationally sanctioned interventions.
15. How does the CDI handle the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?
As a relatively objective way to decide which military interventions should be counted, the security component of the CDI only includes contributions to interventions approved by international bodies such as the U.N. Security Council, NATO, and African Union. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had no such mandate, it is not counted. On the other hand, NATO authorized the operations in Afghanistan, so it is counted.
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