IGCSE,Economic Development - Millennium Goals

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Target: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day

• Income share held by lowest 20 percent
• Malnutrition prevalence, weight for age (percent of children under 5)
• Poverty headcount ratio at $1.25 a day (PPP) (percent of population) - Four out of every five people living in extreme poverty will live in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.
• Prevalence of undernourishment (percent of population)

% of population living on less than $1.25 a day	1990	2008
Sub-Saharan Africa	56	47
Southern Asia (including India)	52	26
South-Eastern Asia	45	17
China	60	13
Latin America and the Caribbean	12	6
Developing regions (excluding China)	41	28

There has been clear progress in reducing the scale of extreme poverty The proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 47 per cent in 1990 to 24 per cent in 2008—a reduction from over 2 billion to less than 1.4 billion. That said the rate of extreme poverty reduction has slowed down because of the impact of the global recession post 2008 and the effects of high world food and energy prices. By 2015, well over one billion people will live in extreme poverty; 4/5ths of these people will live in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

Those countries that have made most rapid progress towards the first of the MDGs—to halve those living in extreme poverty by 2015—have been fast growing countries of East Asia, most notably India, China and Vietnam. The proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 43.1% in 1990 to 22.2% in 2008

To fight extreme poverty the World Bank in 2012 reported that five key areas need to be given extra focus.

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

Target: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. More than half of all out-of-school children are in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Literacy rate, youth total (percent of people ages 15–24)
• Primary completion rate, total (percent of relevant age group)
• School enrolment, primary (percent net)

Progress has been made in lifting school enrolment rates for primary and secondary education although the pace of improvement has slowed in recent years. In developing regions, the enrolment rate for children of primary school age rose from 82 to 90 per cent between 1999 and 2010.

There was a steep rise for Sub-Saharan Africa with enrolment rates jumping from 58% to 78% despite a rise in the size of the primary school age population. 70% of pupils completed their primary education but more progress is needed to address the percentage of girls who are out of school – this links to the MDG goal which focuses on gender opportunities. Only six African countries recorded primary completion rates of 90 percent and above in 2009.

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

Target: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people

Target: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

• Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament (percent) - now there are 8,716 women parliamentarians globally, which is 19.25% of the total number of MPs
• Ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary education (percent) - The ratio between the enrolment rate of girls and that of boys grew from 91 in 1999 to 97 in 2010 for all developing regions
• Ratio of young literate females to males (percent ages 15–24)
• Share of women employed in the non-agricultural sector

Gender parity index for enrolment in different stages of education (Data is for 2010), Girls per 100 boys	Developed Regions	Developing Regions
Primary Education	99	97
Secondary Education	99	96
Tertiary Education	120	98

Factors affecting gender disparities in secondary school enrolment rates

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Target: Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate

• Immunization, measles (percent of children ages 12–23 months)
• Mortality rate, neonatal (death in first month after birth, per 1,000 live births)
• Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births)
• Mortality rate, under-5 (per 1,000)

Under-five mortality rate, 1990 and 2010 (Deaths per 1,000 live births)	1990	2010
Sub-Saharan Africa	174	121
Southern Asia	117	66
South-Eastern Asia	71	32
Latin America and the Caribbean	54	23
Developed regions	15	7
Developing regions	97	63

There has been a 35 per cent drop in child mortality rates and despite population growth, the number of under-five deaths worldwide fell from more than 12 million in 1990 to 7.6 million in 2010. Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced a 2.4% annual fall. Despite this progress there are several areas of crucial concern:

• Death rates in the first month after birth have risen in the last ten years
• There are big disparities in infant survival rates between rich and poor households and between families where the mother has an education and where she does not
• Nearly one in five children under age five in the developing world is underweight
• In the world's poorest countries every 2 minutes a woman dies from complications of childbirth

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

Target: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio

• Births attended by skilled health staff (percent of total)
• Maternal mortality ratio (modelled estimate, per 100,000 live births)

Maternal mortality, (Maternal deaths per 100 000 live births, women aged 15-49)	1990	2010
Sub-Saharan Africa	850	500
Southern Asia	590	220
South-Eastern Asia	410	150
The Caribbean	290	190
Latin America	130	72
Developed regions	26	16
Developing regions	440	240

In 2010, 32 women per hour died as a result of giving birth. The global burden of maternal death has fallen sharply with a reduction of 47 per cent since 1990 – but the maternal mortality ration in developing regions was still 15 times higher than in developed regions. One in ten maternal deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa was attributed to the effects of HIV-aids. There has been a ten per cent rise over twenty years in the percentage of birth deliveries attended by skilled doctors, nurses or mid-wives (65% in 2010) but this figure drops to less than half in Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Factors behind improving maternal health outcomes:

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

Target: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS

• Contraceptive prevalence (percent of women ages 15–24)
• Incidence of tuberculosis (per 100,000 people)
• Prevalence of HIV, female (percent ages 15–24), total (percent of population ages 15–49)

HIV / AIDS

• At the end of 2010, 6.5 million people were receiving antiretroviral therapy for HIV or AIDS in developing regions. The incidence of new HIV infections per year per 100 people aged 15-49 in 2010 was highest in Sub-Saharan Africa (0.41) and Southern Africa (1.08). For developing regions the incidence of HIV has fallen from 0.09 in 2001 to 0.07in 2010.
• Limited progress has been made in reducing new HIV infections, but there is better news on increasing life expectancy because of the wider availability and lower cost of using life-saving antiretroviral therapy. The price of antiretroviral treatment has fallen in the past decade: from $10k per person per year in 2000 to $100 in 2011. Young people aged between 15-24 years account for 40% of all new adult HIV infections. Infection rates in young women 15–24 years old are twice as high as among men of the same age

Malaria

An estimated 655,000 malaria deaths occurred in 2010, of which 91 per cent were in Africa and 86 per cent were children under 5 years of age. Major progress has been made in cutting malaria partly due to increased international funding and the wider adoption of insecticide-treated ben nets. There are worries however that resistance levels to some malaria drugs may be weakening.

Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability

Target: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources

• CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita), GDP per unit of energy use
• Forest area (percent of land area), Nationally protected areas (percent of total land area)
• Increase resilience to the effects of climate change - Studies show that the poor of the world are exposed to much greater risk from natural hazards
• Improved water source (percent of population with access) - the proportion of people using an improved water source rising from 76 per cent in 1990 to 89 per cent in 2010.
• Improve sanitation - nearly half of the population in developing regions—2.5 billion—still lacks access to improved sanitation facilities at the end of 2011

One of the pressing issues with this goal is the target to improve access to clean water and sanitation:

• Eleven per cent of the global population—783 million people—remains without access to an improved source of drinking water and, at the current pace, 605 million people will still lack coverage in 2015. Rural water shortages continue to stay well above that for urban residents
• The MDG target on sanitation is unlikely to be met by 2015. Sanitation coverage increased from 36 per cent in 1990 to 56 per cent in 2010 in the developing regions as a whole. But over 2.5 billion people in developing countries still do not have access to improved sanitation facilities. 15% of the global population have no sanitation facilities at all.

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

• Aid per capita (current US$)
• Telephone lines (per 100 people), mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people)
• Internet users (per 100 people), personal computers (per 1,000 people)
• Unemployment, youth total (percent of total labour force ages 15–24)

There are separate chapters on the economics of aid, telecommunications and development and the economics of unemployment in developing countries.