Foreign aid given as a share of national income
What you should know about this indicator
- Official development assistance (ODA) eligibility criteria are based on (i) country eligibility, (ii) concessionality, and (iii) the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as the main objective. This means that (i) only countries and territories included in the list of ODA recipients are eligible to receive this assistance, (ii) lending is defined by minimum requirements according to the income category of the recipient country, and (iii) reporting rules have been implemented to define what is "primarily developmental".
- This indicator is divided by the gross national income (GNI) of the country. The GNI measures the total income earned by residents of a country, including income earned abroad.
- Disbursements refer to money actually given/received, which can differ from what was originally pledged. These are also net disbursements: grants and loans are valued in the same way by recording the flows of cash that were granted, or the face value of loans that were lent to developing countries, deducting any repayments on the loans. The method does not reflect actual efforts by donor countries: a grant represents a bigger effort than a loan; and a loan with a very low interest rate and a long repayment period represents a bigger effort than a loan with a higher interest rate and a short repayment period. From 2018, headline figures from the OECD are based on the grant-equivalent methodology, which is a more accurate reflection of the effort made by donor countries.
- The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) mantains a list of territories where ODA can be provided. The countries and territories on the DAC list of ODA recipients consist of all low and middle income countries based on gross national income (GNI) per capita as published by the World Bank, with the exception of former G8 members, EU members, and countries with a firm date for entry into the EU. The list also includes all of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) as defined by the United Nations. The list is updated every three years and is available in the OECD website.
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
We calculated this indicator by dividing by the gross national income (GNI) of the donor country regional aggregation. The GNI estimate is available in the OECD dataset.
The OECD provides indicators as a share of GNI, but only until 2017 for net flows. We calculated this to have the entire series.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Foreign aid given as a share of national income”. Our World in Data (2024). Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/foreign-aid-given-as-a-share-of-national-income-net [online resource]
How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
OECD (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Full citation
OECD (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Foreign aid given as a share of national income – Net disbursements” [dataset]. OECD, “OECD Official Development Assistance (ODA) - DAC1: Flows by donor (ODA+OOF+Private)” [original data]. Retrieved October 7, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/foreign-aid-given-as-a-share-of-national-income-net