placestats

Aid given vs. Hours worked (PWT)

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 47 countries, Aid given and Hours worked (PWT) rise and fall together at r = -0.39 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = -0.36, q = 0.047, allowing for the many pairs tested). Caution: leave-one-out range spans 0.18 in r.

Comparing countries across the middle half of aid given, 0.134% to 0.432% of GNI, hours worked (PWT) is 131 hours per year lower at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 156 hours per year.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.394p = 0.006 · 47 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.357p = 0.015 · likely range [-0.59, -0.07]
p, allowing for regions0.005standard error 0.047 · 4 regions
Check for luck (q)0.047across 18,622 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Aid given · % of GNIlink with income +0.68 · high
Hours worked (PWT) · hours per yearlink with income -0.40 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Aid given · % of GNI →Hours worked (PWT) · hours per year →0.0118%1.03%1,3352,514United Arab Emirates: 0.613% of GNI, 2,514 hours per yearAustralia: 0.184% of GNI, 1,611 hours per yearAustria: 0.329% of GNI, 1,438 hours per yearAzerbaijan: 0.0633% of GNI, 1,791 hours per yearBelgium: 0.37% of GNI, 1,593 hours per yearBulgaria: 0.117% of GNI, 1,659 hours per yearCanada: 0.316% of GNI, 1,731 hours per yearSwitzerland: 0.46% of GNI, 1,529 hours per yearCyprus: 0.0384% of GNI, 1,840 hours per yearCzechia: 0.116% of GNI, 1,774 hours per yearGermany: 0.558% of GNI, 1,335 hours per yearDenmark: 0.723% of GNI, 1,380 hours per yearSpain: 0.271% of GNI, 1,638 hours per yearEstonia: 0.193% of GNI, 1,606 hours per yearFinland: 0.443% of GNI, 1,497 hours per yearFrance: 0.423% of GNI, 1,487 hours per yearUnited Kingdom: 0.432% of GNI, 1,523 hours per yearGreece: 0.13% of GNI, 1,893 hours per yearCroatia: 0.236% of GNI, 1,974 hours per yearHungary: 0.139% of GNI, 1,668 hours per yearIreland: 0.425% of GNI, 1,654 hours per yearIceland: 0.337% of GNI, 1,452 hours per yearIsrael: 0.0512% of GNI, 1,890 hours per yearItaly: 0.296% of GNI, 1,701 hours per yearJapan: 0.345% of GNI, 1,654 hours per yearKazakhstan: 0.0188% of GNI, 1,975 hours per yearKorea, Rep.: 0.203% of GNI, 1,910 hours per yearKuwait: 0.113% of GNI, 2,318 hours per yearLithuania: 0.212% of GNI, 1,640 hours per yearLuxembourg: 0.993% of GNI, 1,452 hours per yearLatvia: 0.18% of GNI, 1,625 hours per yearMalta: 0.205% of GNI, 1,848 hours per yearNetherlands: 0.58% of GNI, 1,439 hours per yearNorway: 1.03% of GNI, 1,412 hours per yearNew Zealand: 0.273% of GNI, 1,708 hours per yearPoland: 0.162% of GNI, 1,807 hours per yearPortugal: 0.178% of GNI, 1,735 hours per yearQatar: 0.432% of GNI, 2,435 hours per yearRomania: 0.135% of GNI, 1,826 hours per yearRussian Federation: 0.0667% of GNI, 2,087 hours per yearSaudi Arabia: 0.447% of GNI, 2,125 hours per yearSlovak Republic: 0.133% of GNI, 1,621 hours per yearSlovenia: 0.216% of GNI, 1,588 hours per yearSweden: 0.849% of GNI, 1,432 hours per yearThailand: 0.0118% of GNI, 2,177 hours per yearTurkiye: 0.501% of GNI, 1,747 hours per yearUnited States: 0.094% of GNI, 1,789 hours per yearAREAUTBGRKWTLUXNORQATRUSSAUSVKSWETHA

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted-0.3940.00647
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted-0.5673.3e-547
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income-0.3570.01547
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income-0.4530.00247

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 47 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.037 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.491 (without ARE) to -0.315 (without QAT). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: ARE (-0.134).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • leave-one-out range spans 0.18 in r
  • correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
Europe & Central Asia34-0.54

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third16-0.35
Middle third15-0.65
Richest third16-0.33

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians33-0.60

By official ideology

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
No strong official ideology38-0.59

By party system

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
No parties banned40-0.55

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.529 after dropping 5 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 34years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = -0.122, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose aid given moved did not tend to see their hours worked (PWT) move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)-0.357for comparison
Within countries-0.292each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.122q = 0.177 · 48 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.027q = 0.782
Read with care.
  • Almost all of the second indicator's variation is between countries, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

1,217 country-years (one country in one year), 48 countries, 1990–2023, about 25 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 20% for Aid given, 9% for Hours worked (PWT). The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.20−0.2-100+10years Hours worked (PWT) trails Aid given →lag -10: r = -0.039 (n = 1,039)lag -9: r = -0.051 (n = 1,073)lag -8: r = -0.067 (n = 1,104)lag -7: r = -0.081 (n = 1,131)lag -6: r = -0.085 (n = 1,158)lag -5: r = -0.079 (n = 1,184)lag -4: r = -0.088 (n = 1,210)lag -3: r = -0.112 (n = 1,235)lag -2: r = -0.136 (n = 1,259)lag -1: r = -0.135 (n = 1,240)lag +0: r = -0.122 (n = 1,217)lag +1: r = -0.114 (n = 1,166)lag +2: r = -0.108 (n = 1,116)lag +3: r = -0.104 (n = 1,072)lag +4: r = -0.098 (n = 1,022)lag +5: r = -0.081 (n = 977)lag +6: r = -0.087 (n = 928)lag +7: r = -0.116 (n = 881)lag +8: r = -0.126 (n = 835)lag +9: r = -0.159 (n = 793)lag +10: r = -0.176 (n = 744)

Same year (lag 0): -0.122. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

This curve peaks at the edge of the window (lag +10), so it is still drifting where the search stops. That pattern usually reflects a slow trend left over in the data, not a link with real timing. The peak value should not be read as the “true” link at the right lag.

The data


% of GNI
hours per year		Years
Norway NOR1.03%1,4122025, 2023
Luxembourg LUX0.993%1,4522025, 2023
Sweden SWE0.849%1,4322025, 2023
Denmark DNK0.723%1,3802025, 2023
United Arab Emirates ARE0.613%2,5142025, 2023
Netherlands NLD0.58%1,4392025, 2023
Germany DEU0.558%1,3352025, 2023
Turkiye TUR0.501%1,7472025, 2023
Switzerland CHE0.46%1,5292025, 2023
Saudi Arabia SAU0.447%2,1252024, 2023
Finland FIN0.443%1,4972025, 2023
Qatar QAT0.432%2,4352025, 2023
United Kingdom GBR0.432%1,5232025, 2023
Ireland IRL0.425%1,6542025, 2023
France FRA0.423%1,4872025, 2023

OECD databases as named on each indicator: PISA, Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), Income Distribution Database, Development Assistance Committee statistics, Family Database, Government at a Glance, Corporate Tax Statistics, employment and environment statistics
Feenstra, Robert C., Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer (2015), "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table", American Economic Review, 105(10), 3150-3182, www.ggdc.net/pwt. Data: Penn World Table version 11.0, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, doi:10.34894/FABVLR.

Sources

Aid given

Official development assistance given

OECD · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 (OECD terms and conditions) · updated annual, except the snapshots noted per indicator

Donor countries only, about fifty. Countries that receive aid do not appear, so any link with this is a link among rich countries. No "better" direction is set.

Hours worked (PWT)

Average annual hours worked per person engaged (Penn World Table)

Groningen Growth and Development Centre, University of Groningen · via DataverseNL · CC BY 4.0 · updated irregular (new versions every few years)

Hours actually worked in a year, averaged over everyone with a job, including the self-employed and part-timers. It measures the same thing as the OECD hours measure, and for countries in both the two mostly agree. This one is kept because it reaches much further: about 130 countries each year from 2010 to 2023, where the OECD series has 38 countries and stops in 2016. Before 2000 it covers mainly rich countries. No "better" direction is set.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2020–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 4 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 18,622 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated V-Dem v16; V-Party v2. How the country data works · explore Aid given and Hours worked (PWT)

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Aid given changes Hours worked (PWT), or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Aid given or Hours worked (PWT)