The Center for Global Development has released its annual ‘Commitment to Development Index’, and this year Denmark tops the list of countries most committed to the developing world.
The index is an average of scores on seven different measures: aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security and technology. Scores are then adjusted for a country’s size, levelling the playing field for smaller countries like Denmark. Scores were also scaled so that scores of ‘5’ – overall and within each individual measure – were average.
Overall, Denmark scored 7.0, finishing above both Norway and Sweden, which rounded out the top three with scores of 6.6 and 6.4 respectively.
The index is a rather sophisticated measure, both rewarding and penalising countries for specific policies that either encourage or discourage development, economic, social and otherwise.
For example, the ‘aid’ measure includes ‘quality’ rankings: certain types of aid can actually hurt a country’s development, such as donations to corrupt governments, flooding governments with small aid projects and the donation of “tied” aid, which must be spent on the donor country’s goods and services.
Denmark received high marks across the board, and only scored below average on the ‘investment’ measure, which compared the ease with which a country’s government facilitates investment in a developing nation.
With Denmark, Norway and Sweden filling the top three spots, the results are a win for both Denmark and greater Scandinavia.
Luxembourg (6.3), Austria (6.2), the Netherlands (6.1), Finland (6.0), New Zealand (5.8), the United Kingdom (5.7) and Portugal (5.5) rounded out the top ten. Read more about the index here.
