We estimated the costs of reaching the poverty-reduction goal by first calculating the growth needed to reduce poverty in each country applying an estimated growth elasticity of poverty , and then calculating the investment needed to achieve the growth using a fixed incremental capital-output ratio. Neither poverty reduction nor growth follows these linear patterns, but it was the best we could do for all developing countries.
The only problem was that, in almost all of these cross-country regressions, the coefficient on health spending was not significantly different from zero the reasons can be found in this paper. So the confidence interval of the cost estimate could be between zero and infinity.
It could also have been negative, especially if the policy and institutional reforms involved cutting wasteful subsidies to improve service delivery, but we chose not to mention that. In this setting, approaching development as a problem of finance—the amount of money it will take to achieve the goals—can be counterproductive. In short, by costing the Millennium Development Goals, I may have helped shift attention away from what is needed to reach the goals, and hence contributed to the perpetuation of poverty.
Shame on me. Smith Future Development. The Future Development blog informs and stimulates debate on key development issues. The MDGs severely lacked monitoring, evaluation, and other frameworks for impact accountability.
The SDGs, on the other hand, pushes us to manage impact data ensuring its quality and timely acquisition. Check out Sopact's cloud-based impact data management solution. The targets and indicators that come packaged with the SDGs are just a start.
Impact leaders have had to work together to figure out efficient and innovative ways to acquire, manage, analyze, and report on data aligned with the SDGs. The impact insights gleaned from reliable data are, well, much more reliable! This enables impact practitioners to learn and improve programs, eventually improving outcomes for beneficiaries. With all this data and a move towards more financing of development initiatives, impact investors have taken a more leading role in the SDG charge.
From eight goals to 17, from a top-down approach to one of the biggest collaborative efforts in human history, the shift from the MDGs to the SDGs has been a slow but steady realization of human potential to work together for the greater good.
But with the data revolution that is underway, along with emergent collaboration and financing models, and the force of impact investing being introduced more fully into the development sector, a brighter future is becoming a more feasible reality. Alan is a social sector consultant and one of the founding directors of Quantica Education, a school of social entrepreneurship in Colombia.
Anna Childs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. At the dawn of this millennium, countries of the United Nations signed a declaration committing the global community to the reduction of poverty, hunger, gender inequality, illiteracy, child mortality and environmental degradation.
These ambitions were made tangible in the Millennium Development Goals , with corresponding targets set for These will shortly be replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs , a framework of goals and targets for measuring further advances to the end of There are many other positive indicators, and every statistic about a child saved from disease or malnourishment, protected from HIV, learning safely in school, drinking clean water and brought out of oppressive poverty is to be celebrated for the change it represents.
Using the goals and targets as country-specific goals, according to AbouZahr and Boerma , gives too little consideration to national baselines, contexts and implementation capacities. Another point of critique of Van Norren is the focusing of development efforts on such a reduced list of goals and neglecting their interconnectedness.
Similarly, Molyneux points at the separate focus on malaria and HIV that misses the necessity and opportunity to address the synergism between the control and treatment of these communicable diseases. Waage et al. Even though equality was defined as a core value of the Millennium Declaration, the most often mentioned omission found in the literature is that equity and equality often used interchangeably are insufficiently addressed.
Fukuda-Parr sees a missing goal for reducing inequality within and between countries. Others are concerned that the MDGs even push towards un-egalitarian outcomes because most health initiatives would first reach mainly the better-off parts of society Gwatkin, ; Waage et al.
Reidpath, Morel, Mecaskey and Allotey underline this concern referring to MDG 4 where the reduction of under-five mortality rate is easier to reach through targeting those easier to access and leaving out the worst off.
Specifically in regard to MDG 3, authors point out that a target of decreasing gender disparities is not the same as ending gender inequality since focus is reduced to numerical imbalances, whereas substantive asymmetries are left unaddressed Kabeer, ; Subrahmanian, Mohindra and Nikiema criticise the lack of MDG objectives for gender-based violence and economic discrimination.
Several authors are concerned that the MDGs fail to include political and human rights. In Ziai's view, MDG targets are presented not as political but as technical problems, where the solution appears as simply increasing financial resources. In general, civil, political or human rights are not represented enough in the MDG framework, given they represent an important and enduring global consensus Fukuda-Parr, ; Saith, Cecchini and Notti argue that a human rights orientation could have had a positive impact on monitoring and synergism within the MDG framework.
The author explains that MDGs are more difficult to reach for the worst-off countries and are, therefore, drawing a darker picture of the progress made in those regions. He argues that measuring changes in proportions make it harder for countries with worse baselines to show progress. Lewin points out that pushing for primary education results in more graduates that then do not have the opportunity for further education in developing economies.
MDG 2 particularly fails to ensure quality issues such as availability of teachers, school infrastructure and maintenance as well as completion rates Barrett, ; Lay, Mekonen criticises not targeting a high pupil—teacher ratio, describing the alarming rate of globally, in sub-Saharan Africa, in Chad and in Congo. Health plays an important role within the MDGs framework, where three of the eight goals directly MDG 4—6 , and several other goals more indirectly, relate to health.
Some suggest that Target 7. Others call Target 7. Keyzer and Van Wesenbeeck believe that 15 years is too short to address development and see progress. Others argue that intermediate milestones and targets would have helped to maintain focus and achieve the goals Clemens et al. For the educational MDG 2, Johnston found that data on school completion are difficult to obtain because enrolment data are usually collected at the beginning of the academic year, ignoring attendance and drop outs.
Additionally, unreliable data can also lead to miscalculated cost estimation with important financial consequences for donor and recipient countries Saith, For Oya , there is not enough guidance to achieve the expected but unrealistic outcomes, which might create pessimism and cynicism in poor countries. Another concern is the important influence of the MDG framework on data processing, interpretation and research.
Institutionalised targets can also lead to misused and manipulated statistics, and a strong financial influence risks narrowing priorities of academic research Saith, The author adds that this increased need to compete for funds forces organisations such as non-governmental, civil society and international development organisations to fall in line with the goals even if this might not always be in the best interest of the institution nor of the beneficiaries.
Since the establishment of the MDGs, there has been significant progress in health and well-being in several regions of the globe.
Broad consensus suggests that the MDGs have had a positive role in this achievement. At the same time, however, both practitioners and policy-makers recognise some limitations within the MDG framework. In this same vein, the purpose of this literature review is to describe the broad variety of limitations found in the literature and, thus, identify opportunities for discussion and improvements for the post agenda.
After numerous international summits, the consensus that resulted in the Millennium Declaration of subsequently led to broad positive acceptance of the MDGs. Initially, most authors appeared to look optimistically towards the initiative, and they were more likely to publish about implementation and progress of the MDGs. However, more recently, relatively greater criticism and reflection appeared to develop.
These MDG criticisms were mixed, without clear consensus. What often appeared as a limitation to some was seen as a strength by others. Some authors consider the MDGs to be too ambitious and unrealistic, while others believe they are too narrow to capture the major issues of development.
One of the most commonly cited concerns is the manner in which the MDGs were developed. Authors describe the creation of the MDGs as being led by a few country actors who decided on the choice of goals with very little involvement from developing countries. In contrast, the World Health Organization is currently engaging member states, civil society, private sector and academia to help with the post development agenda UN Task Team, Finding the balance between the complexity of development and staying concise and practicable at the same time will be a major challenge for future goals.
Structural concerns with the MDGs include that they are too simplistic, unachievable and have too much of a managerial approach while not identifying who is accountable for achieving them. Furthermore, reducing development objectives to a list of eight artificially separated goals risks ignoring their interconnectedness and subsequently reinforcing a vertical nature in programmes, policies, research and funding.
Others have pointed out that synergism between sectors has been made possible through the MDGs; for example, a strong focus on health — in particular, malaria — has helped advance education and economic growth of countries Berkley et al. Authors expressed concerns that establishing the MDGs as shared worldwide goals overlooked individual national and regional needs and excluded several notable development issues such as limited governance capabilities. Furthermore, progress is measured in mostly national aggregated data that prevent a detailed understanding of regional progress and obscure within-country disparities.
With regard to the content of the MDGs, some authors argue that the limited focus on poverty, and not on reduction of inequity and inequalities, is seen as a major omission of the MDG framework.
In fact, along with progress, the issue of equity appears to be receiving increasing attention from the international community. In their recommendations the task team included human rights, equality and sustainability as core values of future goals.
Various authors cite concerns over specific MDG targets and indicators. The arbitrary choice of a poverty line is criticised as well as the general use of average and proportions, making it harder to achieve measurable progress in worst-off countries. Despite MDG revisions in , reproductive health is still not adequately included, and MDG 7 does not adequately address increasing environmental challenges. As might be expected with any examination of a complex issue, there are limitations to this literature review.
Given the sheer volume of documents on the topic of MDGs, the search was limited to English-language articles. This and the exclusion of unpublished and non-peer-reviewed reports might ignore important challenges the MDG framework faced under particular social, cultural and political circumstances. This review focused on less-examined intrinsic factors of the framework that may explain uneven progress in MDGs and across countries.
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