TheCommitment to Development Index (CDI), published annually by theCenter for Global Development, ranks the world's richest countries on their dedication to policies that benefit the five billion people living in poorer nations. Rich and poor countries are linked in many ways; thus the Index looks beyond standard comparisons of foreign aid flows. It measures "development-friendliness" of 40 of the world's richest countries, all member nations of theOECD'sDevelopment Assistance Committee. The CDI assesses national effort in seven policy areas: aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology.[1] It is considered to be a numerical targeting indicator for Goal 8 of theMillennium Development Goals.[2] It shows that aid is about more than quantity – quality also matters – and that development policy is about more than aid. The Index penalizes countries that give with one hand, for instance through aid or investment, but take away with the other, through trade barriers or pollution.
In 2021, the CDI rankedSweden number one in the world, followed byFrance,Norway,Australia and theUnited Kingdom.Argentina,United Arab Emirates andIndia finished at the bottom.
The CDI is a flagship initiative of theCenter for Global Development (CGD), a non-profit think-tank based in Washington, DC. CGD first published the Index inForeign Policy magazine in 2003 with the aim of provoking discussion, highlighting gaps in current knowledge, and encouraging policy reform.[3] The Index was published annually in conjunction with Foreign Policy through 2006, and since published by CGD alone. David Roodman, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, is the chief architect of the Index with research and support from keycollaborators for technical work on components. Although the formulas and analysis at the heart of the CDI remain the same, slight methodological changes occur every year and indicators are constantly updated. The CDI originally ranked 21 countries;South Korea was added in 2008 and five additional European countries were added in 2012:Czech Republic,Hungary,Luxembourg,Poland, andSlovakia. They would add 13 more countries in the late 2010s. In 2008, regional CDIs were also published, assessing donor government policies and engagement to specific regions of the world such assub-Saharan Africa andLatin America.
Foreign aid is the first component of the CDI, assessing both quantity as a percent ofGDP and quality. The Index penalizestied aid, which requires recipients to spend aid on products from the donor nation and raises project costs by 15 to 30 percent. Aid to poor, better-governed nations is also favored by the CDI. While aid toEquatorial Guinea—where corruption is more widespread and rule of law is weaker—is counted at 15¢ on the dollar, aid toGhana—where poverty is high and governance relatively good—is counted at 94¢ on the dollar.[4] Donors are penalized for overloading recipient governments with too many small aid projects, which burden recipient officials with hosting obligations and regular report filing. Finally, the Index rewards governments for letting taxpayers write off charitable contributions, since some of those contributions go toOxfam,CARE, and other nonprofits working in developing countries.
International trade has been a force for economic development for centuries. Because rich-country players call most of the shots in this intensely political process, some goods that poor countries are best at producing, including crops, still face high barriers in rich countries. The trade component of the CDI penalizes countries for erecting barriers to imports of crops, clothing, and other goods from poor nations. It looks at two kinds of barriers:tariffs (taxes) on imports, andsubsidies for domestic farmers, which stimulate overproduction and depress world prices.
Previously it was called theInvestment. The CDI strives to reward rich countries that pursue policies that encourage investment and financial transparency that is good for development. It looks at two kinds of capital flows:foreign direct investment, which occurs when a company from one country buys a stake in an existing company or builds a factory in another country; andportfolio investment, which occurs when foreigners buy securities that are traded on open exchanges. The investment component is built on a checklist of twenty questions. Do the rich-country governments, for example, offer political risk insurance, encouraging companies to invest in poor countries whose political climate would otherwise be deemed too insecure? Do they have tax provisions or treaties to prevent overseas investors from being taxed both at home and in the investment country?
The CDI rewards migration of both skilled and unskilled people, though unskilled more so. It uses data on the gross inflow of migrants from developing countries in a recent year and the net increase in the number of unskilled migrant residents from developing countries during the 1990s. The CDI also uses indicators of openness to students from poor countries and aid forrefugees andasylum seekers.
Rich countries use a disproportionate amount of scarce resources, and poor countries are most vulnerable toglobal warming and ecological deterioration. The environment component looks at what rich countries are doing to reduce their disproportionate use of the global commons. Countries do well if theirgreenhouse gas emissions are falling, if theirgas taxes are high, if they do not subsidize the fishing industry, if they have a lowfossil fuel rate per capita, and if they control imports of illegally cut tropical timber.
The security component of the CDI compares rich countries on military actions that affect developing countries. The CDI looks at four aspects of the security-development nexus. It tallies the financial and personnel contributions topeacekeeping operations and forciblehumanitarian interventions, although it counts only operations approved by an international body such as theU.N. Security Council orNATO. It also rewards countries that base naval fleets where they can secure sea lanes, and for participating in international security regimes that promote non-proliferation, disarmament and international rule of law—such as theComprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), theOttawa Convention on land mines, and theInternational Criminal Court (ICC). Finally, the CDI penalizes some exports of arms to nations, especially ones that are undemocratic and spend heavily on the military.
The technology component of the CDI analyses policies of the rich countries that support creation and dissemination of new technologies, which can profoundly shape life in developing countries. The CDI rewards policies that support the creation and dissemination of innovations of value to developing countries. It rewards government subsidies forresearch and development(R&D), whether delivered through spending or tax breaks, while discounting military R&D by half. Also factored in are policies onintellectual property rights (IPRs) that can inhibit the international flow of innovations. These take the form ofpatent laws that arguably go too far in advancing the interests of those who produce innovations at the expense of those who use them. U.S. trade negotiators, for example, have pushed for developing countries to agree never to force the immediate licensing of a patent even when it would serve a compelling public interest, as anHIV/AIDS drug might if produced by low-cost local manufacturers.
The health component of the CDI was added in 2021 as a response to theCOVID-19 pandemic. It initially was partially part of the measures for security under pandemic preparedness and antimicrobial resistance. They take into account how the country responded to the pandemic, and how successful they are at preventing it mostly due tovaccines. Other than that, they measure how in "peacetime" the risks a country would make to health like making abiological weapon that could threaten domestic borders.
The CDI ranks 40 countries which are the richest, most developed countries in the world. Together, they constitute the majority membership of theOECD'sDevelopment Assistance Committee which is the official organization of aid donors, along with one DAC observers (Hungary).
The CDI quantifies a range of rich-country policies in seven policy area. Scores on each component are scaled on a percentage so that an average score in 2021 equals 50%. A country's final score is the average of those for each component. The CDI adjusts for size in order to compare how well countries are living up to their potential to help. Data for the CDI come from official sources such as theWorld Bank, theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and theUnited Nations, or from academic researchers.CGD and its collaborators also collect information country by country for parts of the aid, migration and investment components. The 2012 technical paper and spreadsheet provide more detail.[5][6]
| Rank | Country | Investment | Development Finance | Technology | Environment | Trade | Security | Migration | Health[9] | Overall (Average) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Sweden | 86% | 95% | 40% | 100% | 92% | 86% | 100% | 92% | 100 |
| 2 |  France | 100% | 54% | 69% | 95% | 80% | 85% | 39% | 59% | 78 |
| 3 |  Norway | 70% | 96% | 58% | 83% | 31% | 88% | 66% | 68% | 75 |
| 4 |  Australia | 67% | 45% | 100% | 50% | 97% | 84% | 37% | 90% | 74 |
| 5 |  United Kingdom | 90% | 82% | 38% | 86% | 86% | 100% | 28% | 56% | 74 |
| 6 |  Netherlands | 57% | 80% | 34% | 86% | 100% | 86% | 46% | 82% | 74 |
| 7 |  Germany | 80% | 66% | 38% | 84% | 89% | 79% | 58% | 72% | 74 |
| 8 |  Finland | 63% | 67% | 33% | 73% | 85% | 90% | 45% | 100% | 71 |
| 9 |  Canada | 94% | 56% | 62% | 49% | 72% | 77% | 54% | 85% | 70 |
| 10 |  Denmark | 57% | 87% | 36% | 86% | 83% | 92% | 31% | 72% | 69 |
| 11 |  Austria | 63% | 50% | 62% | 85% | 79% | 94% | 46% | 55% | 67 |
| 12 |  Portugal | 60% | 52% | 45% | 94% | 71% | 89% | 55% | 60% | 66 |
| 13 |  Switzerland | 61% | 63% | 51% | 82% | 56% | 75% | 47% | 81% | 65 |
| 14 |  Luxembourg | 39% | 100% | 83% | 34% | 70% | 68% | 57% | 62% | 62 |
| 15 |  New Zealand | 54% | 30% | 70% | 74% | 94% | 81% | 55% | 52% | 62 |
| 16 |  Belgium | 69% | 74% | 40% | 71% | 76% | 71% | 54% | 57% | 62 |
| 17 |  Japan | 63% | 48% | 46% | 77% | 85% | 69% | 22% | 92% | 60 |
| 18 |  Ireland | 72% | 75% | 22% | 83% | 56% | 95% | 36% | 45% | 57 |
| 19 |  Italy | 81% | 53% | 22% | 86% | 74% | 83% | 45% | 27% | 54 |
| 20 |  Spain | 78% | 49% | 18% | 92% | 80% | 75% | 42% | 33% | 53 |
| 21 |  Czech Republic | 47% | 45% | 42% | 81% | 76% | 85% | 14% | 55% | 49 |
| 22 |  United States | 47% | 50% | 30% | 44% | 82% | 93% | 36% | 58% | 46 |
| 23 |  Slovakia | 43% | 45% | 18% | 87% | 60% | 96% | 4% | 69% | 44 |
| 24 |  South Korea | 36% | 42% | 88% | 76% | 24% | 59% | 32% | 54% | 44 |
| 25 |  Hungary | 42% | 40% | 27% | 89% | 58% | 95% | 10% | 56% | 44 |
| 26 |  Chile | 40% | 30% | 15% | 92% | 81% | 48% | 81% | 29% | 42 |
| 27 |  Greece | 59% | 50% | 11% | 84% | 45% | 83% | 61% | 19% | 42 |
| 28 |  South Africa | 37% | 51% | 61% | 61% | 37% | 84% | 35% | 25% | 38 |
| 29 |  Turkey | 17% | 90% | 10% | 60% | 12% | 53% | 98% | 33% | 34 |
| 30 |  Poland | 33% | 44% | 11% | 80% | 52% | 71% | 9% | 18% | 22 |
| 31 |  Brazil | 55% | 42% | 36% | 80% | 3% | 58% | 30% | 0% | 21 |
| 32 |  Saudi Arabia | 5% | 58% | 56% | 24% | 42% | 26% | 8% | 88% | 19 |
| 33 |  Indonesia | 24% | 43% | 30% | 79% | 14% | 57% | 0% | 48% | 19 |
| 34 |  Mexico | 48% | 28% | 0% | 78% | 30% | 51% | 16% | 38% | 16 |
| 35 |  Israel | 55% | 0% | 36% | 59% | 56% | 1% | 28% | 37% | 13 |
| 36 |  China | 18% | 3% | 40% | 79% | 42% | 38% | 0% | 41% | 11 |
| 37 |  Russia | 17% | 40% | 47% | 55% | 31% | 24% | 7% | 38% | 10 |
| 38 |  Argentina | 17% | 31% | 32% | 75% | 4% | 50% | 20% | 20% | 9 |
| 39 |  United Arab Emirates | 0% | 73% | 30% | 0% | 69% | 0% | 17% | 61% | 5 |
| 40 |  India | 25% | 3% | 20% | 90% | 0% | 25% | 5% | 13% | 0 |
CGD commissions background papers and research for most of the components. However, final design responsibility rests with CGD and the CDI does not necessarily represent the views of contributors.
The Commitment to Development Index has received much media attention over the years and has sparked criticism and discussion among a wide range of audiences. One of the most frequent comments, voiced by theJapanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, questions the selection of the seven components.[10] The ministry argues that several categories may be extraneous when measuring contributions to poverty reduction. The equal weighting of components in the Index is also questioned; the CDI fails to take into account different degrees of impact, thus assuming thatforeign aid and migration have equal effects on development. To continue the conversation, David Roodman responded in a blog post to such comments.[11] Experts have also written papers on how to improve the CDI and proposed similar measures.[12][13][14][15]