- Why are these 21 countries scored?
- Who designs the Commitment to Development Index (CDI)?
- How did you decide what to include in the CDI?
- Did the CDI change much between 2005 and 2006?
- Why do the 2003–05 scores differ from the ones published in those years?
- Should the "winners" be proud?
- How did you decide how to weight the components? Why aren't aid and trade given more weight?
- Don't the United States and Japan give more aid and import more goods from developing countries than any other rich country? How come they don't come out on top? Why do small countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands rank so well instead?
- Why does Austria score over 10 on migration? Why does Japan score negatively on trade?
- Where do the data come from?
- Over what time frame is support for development measured?
- How does the CDI handle the invasion of Iraq?
1. Why are these 21 countries scored?
These 21 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 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC), which is the official organization of aid donors.2. Who designs the Commitment to Development Index (CDI)?
The CDI is maintained by the Center for Global Development and published in Foreign Policy magazine each year. 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), and Keith Maskus of the University of Colorado at Boulder (technology).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. Did the CDI change much between 2005 and 2006?
Less than in any previous year. In the aid component, aid that is meant to improve governance and civil society, including peacekeeping-related aid, is now exempted from the governance-based selectivity discount. So a donor is not so penalized for trying to improve governance in a low-governance country. Ordinarily, aid to poorly governed countries is discounted most. Meanwhile, the investment component now includes an across-the-board penalty for policies that make it easy for companies to get around the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. (See Theodore Moran's working paper.) For simplicity, and because of poor data, the trade component no longer counts agricultural subsidies granted by European Union countries outside their Common Agricultural Policy. There is a new credit in the migration component for countries that charge lower university tuition to foreigners than to nationals, or let them attend for free. Coffee imports have been dropped from the environment component. Finally, the definition of fishing subsidy has been narrowed to exclude spending on general services, such as the coast guard, since the latter do not obviously increase fishing effort in waters near developing countries.5. Why do the 2003–05 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 2003-05 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.6. 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. Almost all countries score below average in at least one area and most are below average in at least three.7. 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.8. Don't the United States and Japan give more aid and import more goods from developing countries than any other rich country? Why don't they come out on top? 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 and Japan give more aid in absolute terms, but they are among the least generous 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.9. Why does Austria score over 10 on migration? Why does Japan score negatively on trade?
Each component of the CDI combines many numbers into a single score, placing that score on a standard scale, so that 5 represents average performance by the standards of the first index year, 2003. This makes it easy to see that Japan's policies, for instance, are above-average on investment (with a 5.6 in 2006), but not as strong on security (2.8) 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.10. Where do the data come from?
Most of the data come from official sources such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the Organization 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, investment components.11. 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 2002 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.12. How does the CDI handle the invasion of Iraq?
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.
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