Are the rich really helping the poor?

The Center for Global Development teamed up with Foreign Policy magazine a couple of years ago to create a really interesting index: the Commitment to Development Index (CDI). The index attempts to rank the world's 21 richest countries by measuring their commitment to helping reduce poverty in the developing world. What makes this index interesting is that it doesn't just add up the amount of financial aid each country disburses every year, but measures a wide range of policies for each country that directly or indirectly affect poverty, namely aid, trade, investment, migration, security, environment, and technology policies. The CDI therefore tries to give you the "big picture" in terms of who among the rich countries are "really" trying to help the poor. This year, the country most committed to reducing poverty is Denmark. Unsurprisingly, all scandinavian countries all score very high on the index.  What is surprising though is that Japan is ranked 21st and last (way behind Greece) and, despite Bush's lousy policies which always appear to go diametrically against the poor's interest, the US is ranked 12th! Interesting...

Here's a good article in FP analysing this year's results.