The contribution of millennium development goals towards improvement in major development indicators, 1990–2015

ABSTRACT

This study explores the contribution of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) towards improvement in seven major development indicators during 1990-2015. The improvement in each indicator is decomposed into two parts. The first is the improvement that is likely to have occurred without the MDGs and is calculated by extrapolating to the entire period 1990-2015 the pre-MDG trend of 1990-2000. The second part is the improvement that may be attributed to the MDGs and is calculated as the actual improvement during 1990-2015 minus the part based on pre-MDG factors. The contributions are estimated for the world and six geographical regions. Apart from the huge diversity across the indicators and the regions, the exercise indicates two main points. First, MDGs did make a positive contribution to the improvement in almost all cases and it is not true that the MDGs contributed little. Second, however, the improvement attributable to the pre-MDG factors dominates contribution of the MDGs. Relative to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the study indicates that attainment of the SDG targets for access to safe water and under-5 mortality at the global level appears likely, but attainment of the targets for poverty rate, maternal mortality, and access to sanitation seems unlikely.

Abbreviation EAP: East Asia & Pacific; ECA: Europe & Central Asia; LAC: Latin America & Caribbean; MENA: Middle East & North Africa; SA: South Asia; SSA: Sub-Saharan Africa; ICP: International Comparison Program; MDGs: Millennium Development Goals; SDGs: Sustainable Development Goals; UN: United Nations; UNICEF: United Nations Children’s Fund; WDI: World Development Indicators

KEYWORDS:

• MDGs
• development indicators
• pre-MDG trends
• MDG contribution

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I12
• I25
• O10
• O19

Acknowledgments

Perceptive comments from an anonymous reviewer are gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer, however, applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The few exceptions to these periods are described in the notes below Table 2.

² The expression in Equation (1) can equivalently be written as:

GY_90-00 = [(Y₀₀/Y₉₀)^0.1 − 1],

which may be more familiar to some readers and is of the kind that is used by UNICEF for calculating the annual rates of reduction.

³ The forecast value for 2015 can equivalently be written as:

Y_f = Y₀₀(1 + GY_90-00)¹⁵, where Y₀₀ is the value of the variable in the year 2000.

⁴ Recall that the periods for global poverty are 1990–1999 and 1999–2013.

⁵ This statement and some others in this paragraph are based on the authors’ calculations.

⁶ Following the MDG targets, the rates for access to safe water and sanitation given in Tables 2, 3 and 4 cover the population without access, but, following the SDGs, the rates in this paragraph relate to the population that has access.