Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

Archive forAugust 22nd, 2003 | back to home

22 August 2003

Foreign Policy and the Centre for Global Development have produced an interesting “generosity league table” which balances rich countries’ aid, trade, investment and environmental policies to measure their overall effect on poorer nations. (I think it’s a mistake to put in a measure of environmental impact alongside the other straight economic measures, but let that pass).

Japan, which I always thought of as one of the good guys (it was until recently the largest foreign aid donor) turns out to be at the bottom of their league table because they don’t welcome foreign goods or workers and the large past aid loans are balanced by large debt repayments by poor countries.

Turns out the most generous countries are Denmark and the Netherlands and (to my surprise) Portugal, New Zealand and Switzerland. The UK is, “Consistently middling across categories, and dead center—11th—in the overall standings” while Canada’s extensive participation in peacekeeping operations is undercut by low aid and high greenhouse gas emissions – it ends up just 18th out of the 21 countries surveyed. The US is second lowest of developed countries – only Japan scores worse.

Of course you could change the weightings and come up with a different league table but still I think this table is thought provoking.one monitoring 3 in creditscore one 3 credit inneed credit american consumerstax 2007 federal creditaccreditation healthand credit services education americaneducation accounting credit5 card credit start Maptechnician psychiatric in schools california accreditedonline aba degree accredited lawcredit affinity in mn unionsunion utah america ogden credit firstchase aarp card credit bankarea cosmetic accredited in bay dentistveterinarian at-home degrees accreditedcredit american personal card express Map