Commitment to Development Index 2010

Abstract

The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) ranks 21 rich countries on how much their policies help or hurt developing countries (Roodman 2007). The starting point for the CDI is the observation that rich and poor countries are linked in many ways—not just by foreign aid, but also through international trade, investment, migration, technology, military affairs, and the environment. The CDI therefore rates rich-country policies in all these areas. The focus on wealthy countries reflects the mission of the Center for Global Development itself. CGD pursues this mission not out of a belief that rich nations dominate the complex processes of change in poorer countries that we loosely call “development”—ultimately, the fate of each country lies mostly in its own hands—but because rich countries ’ policies offer leverage points. Small changes in U.S. immigration policy, for instance, can have large effects on the economies of Latin America. From the point of view of this argument though, the line drawn in the CDI between the rich 21 and the rest is arbitrary at the margin.1 Rapid economic growth in India and China, the renewed geopolitical clout of Russia in an era of expensive oil, and the de facto declaration of financial independence by Brazil and its neighbors from the International Monetary Fund all remind us of

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