Commitment to Development Index 2014
Center for Global Development
Petra Krylová and Owen Barder
5 January 2015 :: 11 pages

The Commitment to Development Index ranks 27 of the world’s richest countries on their policies that affect more than five billion people living in poorer nations. Moving beyond comparing how much foreign aid each country gives, the CDI quantifies a range of rich country
policies that affect poor people:
:: Quantity and quality of foreign aid
:: Openness to trade
:: Policies that encourage investment and financial transparency
:: Openness to migration
:: Environmental policies
:: Promoting international security
::: Support for technology creation and transfer

The Index gives credit for generous and high quality aid, incentives for foreign direct investment and financial transparency, open immigration policies, robust support for technological research and development, and contributions to global security and the environment. Scores are reduced for barriers to imports from developing countries, selling arms to poor and undemocratic nations, barriers to sharing technology, and policies that harm shared environmental resources.

The Bottom Line
For the third year in a row, Denmark tops the Commitment to Development Index in 2014. Denmark is also the only country which is at or above the average on all seven components. The runners up are Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Norway. These five countries do well on the index because of their consistently high performance across all policies.

Among the G7 countries—those that matter most by dint of their economic power—only the United Kingdom places in the top 5. France ranks 9th with average performance across the components, and Germany follows in 12th place, ranking below average on finance and security. The United States is above average in trade, but below average in every other component. Japan and South Korea languish at the bottom of the table, with small aid programs for their sizes, tight borders to the entry of goods and people, and limited involvement in peacekeeping. They are joined near the bottom by Switzerland which ranks last on finance and second last on trade. The Visegrád Group of countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) rank at or below average in most components but their rapid progress in reducing carbon emissions is recognized in the environment dimension….