Instapundit linked to this great article by Daniel Drezner discussing America's performance on a composite "rich nations" index published by the Center for Global Development (CGD).  Drezner believes -- as do I -- that the US government as a whole could be doing more to help the poorer nations of the world (I'd start with Farm subsidies).   But, he also points out -- as do I -- that the statistics cited are massively politicially biased & thus suspectfor a variety of reasons.

CGD publishes a composite score which includes factors such as the environment, contributions to peace keeping, and trade.   Drezner notes, for example, the CGD's calculus on the environment:

...On other policy dimensions, judgment calls went against the United States. Consider the creation of the environment dimension. Almost half of the index comes from a single figure - greenhouse gas emissions per capita. The U.S. does quite poorly on this score - in part because it is the most productive economy in the world. One could argue that the more appropriate measure would be greenhouse gas emissions per unit of output - which would take this factor into account. If U.S. performance was calculated using this measure, then its score on the environmental dimension improves by more than 20%.

Or a better one - peace keeping expenditures:

However, as a fraction of gross domestic product, American expenditures on foreign direct investment or U.N. peacekeepers are piddling. 

...The security dimension is even more problematic. The CGD had initially planned on incorporating data beyond contributions to peacekeeping operations. One obvious public good is the protection of shipping lanes against piracy or armed conflict. The U.S. Navy is practically the sole provider of this good. Furthermore, this facet of security provision benefits a much broader swath of the developing world than peacekeeping, which is currently concentrated in the Balkans and Afghanistan.

I think another broad area where there is systemic lack of understanding by foreign organizations of US charity is that most of our activity is private and thus more distributed.   By contrast, many other nations -- particularly in the EU -- see these types of activities as primarily handled by the government.   The upside of this for the CGD is that centralized government expenditures, while less effective than private contributions, are nevertheless easier to count.

It's well publicized for ex., that approximately 2% of total US GDP goes into private charitable contributions.   This figure far exceeds most of the world and has been relatively constant for a few decades (plus or minus a few basis points).   Now obviously this figure isn't exclusively allocations to international relief but my point remains the same - the orgs that publish these statistics for political ends don't readily look towards this type of charity by the common man (in part because many take a dim view of the common man in the West).   They only count "state" activity because they are statists themselves and are angling for influence on its apparatus.

Bush's "Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief", for example, is readily noted by as a contribution by the US government, but what about the Gates Foundation's donations to Africa?  In your heart of hearts, which of the two is likely to be more effectively administered and thus likely to bring true relief to individuals?

HindRocket in his Powerline blog finds a similar statistical skewering in a recent set of numbers published by "Save the Children" around another politically charged index:

The problem with rankings of this sort is that advocacy groups nearly always put their thumbs on the scale by including factors that are mostly political. Thus, the data show the U.S. ranking 4th on the "Children's Index," but only 13th on the "Women's Index." (The two are combined to form the "Mothers' Index.")

Why this difference? It doesn't take long to figure out. In the "Women's Index," along with such logical items as "percent of pregnant women with anemia" and "adult female literacy rate," Save the Children includes a "political status" column, measured by the percentage of seats in the national legislature held by women. This accounts for most of the difference between the U.S. and European countries like Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, which rank at the top of the index and have more women in their legislatures.