Evaluating two Millennium Development Goals

Overview

What the first two goals set out to achieve, how far each got by 2015, which regions missed, and why the fall in poverty is hard to credit to the goals themselves.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What did the first Millennium Development Goal aim to achieve, and what were its targets?

   Model answer

   It aimed to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Its targets were to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on less than the international extreme poverty line, set at $1 a day in 2000 and revised to $1.25 a day in 2008; to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people; and to halve the proportion of people suffering from hunger.

2. 2

   How much progress was made on extreme income poverty by 2015?

   Model answer

   A great deal. The proportion of people in the developing regions living below $1.25 a day fell from about 47 per cent in 1990 to about 14 per cent in 2015, and the number fell from around 1.9 billion to around 836 million. The halving target was reached in 2010, five years ahead of the deadline. On the headline measure this was the most successful of all the targets, but eradication, which was the goal's actual title, was not achieved and was never really attempted.

3. 3

   Why is it difficult to credit the Millennium Development Goals with the fall in extreme poverty?

   Model answer

   Because most of the reduction happened in eastern Asia, where the extreme poverty rate fell from around 61 per cent in 1990 to around 4 per cent in 2015, and China accounts for the great bulk of that region's population and of the fall. China's poverty reduction was driven by domestic economic reform, industrialisation and rural change that began in 1978, more than two decades before the goals existed, and was in no meaningful sense a response to them. Remove China and East Asia from the global figures and the picture is much less impressive. This is the attribution problem: a global target was met, but it cannot be shown that the framework caused it.

4. 4

   Which region missed the poverty target, and why?

   Model answer

   Sub-Saharan Africa. Its extreme poverty rate fell from about 57 per cent in 1990 to about 41 per cent in 2015, a real improvement but well short of halving. Rapid population growth meant that the number of people in extreme poverty there actually rose even as the proportion fell. The region also started from the lowest base, so the same proportional target demanded far more of it; and progress was held back by conflict, weak infrastructure, dependence on volatile primary commodity exports, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and, for some countries, heavy debt servicing.

5. 5

   Why does the choice of poverty line matter when judging this goal?

   Model answer

   Because $1.25 a day was an extremely low threshold: someone lifted just above it is still desperately poor, with no reliable food security, health care or housing. Progress measured at higher lines was much slower, and large numbers of people clustered just above the line remain vulnerable to falling back after a bad harvest, an illness or a price rise. The line is also periodically revised as prices change, which alters the historical numbers. So the headline success describes movement across a very low bar rather than the end of poverty.

6. 6

   What happened to hunger under the first goal?

   Model answer

   The proportion of undernourished people in the developing regions fell from about 23 per cent in the early 1990s to about 13 per cent by 2014 to 2016, close to halving but not quite achieving it, and still leaving roughly 800 million people undernourished worldwide. Progress was interrupted by the food price spikes of 2008 and 2011, which pushed millions back into hunger, and by conflict and drought in particular countries. Child stunting fell but remained very high in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, showing that chronic undernutrition persisted even where calorie supply improved.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.