- Why publish the Commitment to Development Index (CDI)?
- Who designs the CDI?
- Why are these 27 countries scored?
- How did you decide what to include in the CDI?
- What “poor countries” are CDI countries helping?
- Did the way the CDI is computed change much between 2012 and 2013?
- Why do the 2003–12 scores in the 2013 CDI differ from the ones published in earlieryears?
- Where can I find rankings from previous years?
- Should the "winners" be proud?
- How did you decide how to weight the components? Why aren't aid and trade given more weight?
- Why don't countries with large economies like the United States, 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?
- Why does Austria score over 10 on migration? Why do Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden do the same on Aid?
- Where do the data come from?
- Over what time frame is support for development measured?
- How does the CDI handle the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?
- How does the CDI calculate scores for “Europe as one”?
- I have more questions about the CDI, who should I contact?
1. Why publish the Commitment to Development Index (CDI)?
2. Who designs the 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. CGD Europe director and senior fellow Owen Barder directs the Index, building on the previous work of former CGD senior fellow David Roodman, who also designed the aid component and, in 2005, revised the trade component, building on the work of former CGD senior fellow William Cline. The collaborators are Theodore Moran of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service (finance), Petr Janský of Charles University in Prague (also finance), 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).
The CDI also benefitted from the work of past coordinators: Julia Clark, Julie Waltz, Cindy Prieto, Alicia Bannon and Scott Standley.
3. Why are these 27 countries scored?
Originally comprised of 21 countries, the Index has included South Korea since 2008, and Hungary, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia since 2012. These countries are among the richest and most developed in the world. They constitute the full membership of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD-DAC)—the official organization of aid donors (Iceland became a member of the DAC after most work on the 2013 edidion was completed, therefore it is not included in the 2013 CDI). These countries have the most potential to help poor countries build prosperity, good government, and security.
4. 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.
5. 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, 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.
There were three important changes in the 2013 edition of the CDI, each revising methodology of existing components. The most significant change is related to the previously called “investment” component, which as of 2013 has been renamed the “finance” component. This change is in response to the addition of new indicators assessing financial transparency of rich countries that penalize wealthy nations for financial secrecy within their jurisdictions. The scores are based on the Financial Secrecy Index produced by the Tax Justice Network.
Secondly, there were a few changes in the trade component. For the 2003–12 editions, the Index assessed revealed openness, as measured by actual imports. This indicator was dropped for 2013. Additionally, two indicators with 12.5% weight each were added to the component to capture additional barriers and processes implemented in poor countries that stymie trade in goods and services from poor countries. One is a measure of administrative barriers to goods importation, drawn from the World Bank’s Doing Business surveys, including the cost of importing a container, the days it takes to import a shipment, and how much paperwork is required. The other addition is an index of restrictions on the importation of services, also from World Bank researchers.
Thirdly, there were changes in the assessment of migration policies. For the 2003–12 editions, data on annual inflows of migrations was collected by Migration Policy Institute. In 2013, however, we were able to find comparable data from the OECD. In addition, two indicators are no longer included in the Index: tuition for foreign students and stock change. The latter, which looked at change in foreign residents, was based on census data that has not been updated since 2000, and is thus out of date.
7. Why do the 2003–12 scores in the 2013 CDI differ from the ones published in earlier 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, for example, that could be because of improvement in the measurement rather than improvement in what is measured. The 2003-11 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 the United States, 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. The United States, 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 do Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden score above 10 on Aid? Why does South Korea have a negative score in trade?
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 2012, the reference year, equals 5. This makes it easy to see that Japan's policies, for instance, are above-average on technology (with a 6.2 in 2013), but not as strong on trade (1.6) 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 Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden on aid. 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, it can break through the floor of zero by emitting excessive pollution or imposing high tariffs. The latter is the case of South Korea, which scores -1.2 on trade because it imposes some of the highest tariffs on most agricultural commodities among the CDI countries. In fact, the benchmark averages are from scores in 2012. 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 2011 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?
The CDI measures troop contributions to humanitarian interventions under the assumption that rich countries can contribute to development by using their military power to help ensure the security of people in poorer countries. Because of the inherent controversy in choosing which rich-country interventions to reward—the impact of any humanitarian operation is open to debate—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 international mandate, it is not counted. In 2012, the rule was subtly but significantly toughened: an operation also needs to be reasonably describable as primarily intended to help the citizens of the country or countries in question. The war in Afghanistan, which was sanctioned by NATO, is therefore not counted. Despite its NATO mandate, the operation was undertaken to neutralize a threat to the United States; not to ensure the safety and security of Afghans.
16. How does the CDI calculate scores for “Europe as one”?
If Europe were a country, how would it score on the CDI? To answer this question, we have calculated an aggregate score for Europe. It is calculated by computing a European score for each indicator, then combining indicators in the same way as for other countries. Most of these scores are natural to compute. For example, immigrant flow as a share of receiving population for Europe is the sum of the immigrant flows for individual European nations in the CDI divided by total population of the same. For indicators where aggregation is less natural, such as point scores on investment component indicators, averages are taken, usually weighting by GDP in purchasing power parity terms.
17. I have more questions about the CDI, who should I contact?
Please email any questions, comments, or feedback to Petra Krylova, CDI coordinator.