U.S. Ranks 14th In Annual Index Of Foreign Aid
By NORA BOUSTANY
Washington Post
October 11, 2007
Because of massive assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years and initiatives to fight HIV and AIDS, the United States and Britain have provided more foreign aid to developing nations than ever before, according to David Roodman, a research fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development. But total amounts are not everything.
According to this year’s Commitment to Development Index, compiled by averaging measures in seven policy areas, the Netherlands comes first and Japan last in the 21 countries included in the study. Britain ranks ninth, and the United States is 14th.
Roodman is the author of the study, which factors in performance on aid, trade, investment, the environment, security, technology and migration. Moral obligation and security concerns are the obvious motivations for developed countries such as the United States and Britain to give aid, but the index is not a simple measure of funds.
“U.S. aid to Iraq was $10 billion in 2005, the last year for which we have data. That is one of the largest country-to-country aid flows ever,” Roodman said. But “the CDI only counts that aid at 10 cents on the dollar because of high corruption and weak rule of law.”
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