The MDG Conundrum: Meeting the Targets Without Missing the Point

Vandemoortele, Jan

doi:10.1111/j.1467-7679.2009.00451.x

Cited by 141 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…There has been strong criticism of the MDGs (Easterly, 2009;Vandemoortele, 2009) for setting arbitrary development targets. As our methodology models changes in the child mortality, we can integrate it forward simultaneously with the other variables to make quantitative predictions on future values of child mortality for each specific country (as we have done in Ranganathan et al, 2015b).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The demographic transition and economic growth: implications for development policy

2015

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An important transition in the economic history of countries occurs when they move from a regime of low prosperity, high child mortality and high fertility to a state of high prosperity, low child mortality and low fertility. Researchers have proposed various theories to explain this demographic transition and its relation to economic growth. In this article, we test the validity of some of these theories by fitting a non-linear dynamic model for the available cross-country data. Our approach fills the gap between the micro-level models that discuss causative mechanisms but do not consider if alternative models may fit the data well, and models from growth econometrics that show the impact of different factors on economic growth but do not include non-linearities and complex interactions. In our model, mortality and fertility decline and economic growth are endogenized by considering a simultaneous system of equations in the change variables. The model shows that the transition is best described in terms of a development cycle involving child mortality, fertility and GDP per capita. Fertility rate decreases when child mortality is low, and is weakly dependent on GDP. As fertility rates fall, GDP increases, and as GDP increases, child mortality falls. We further test the hypothesis that female education drives down fertility rates rather than child mortality, but find only weak evidence for it. The Bayesian methodology we use ensures robust models and we identify non-linear interactions between indicators to capture real-world nonlinearities. Hence, our models can be used in policymaking to predict short-term evolutions in the indicator variables. We also discuss how our approach can be used to evaluate policy initiatives such as the Millennium Development Goals or the Sustainable Development Goals and set more accurate, country-specific development targets.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The demographic transition and economic growth: implications for development policy

2015

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“…More broadly, international declarations and commitments (such as MDGs) are a significant driver of policy convergence and harmonization [6,141,149,150]. Growing environmental consciousness and governance in Nepal can be credited to numerous international commitments on biodiversity conservation and forest protection.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clearly the assessment of sustainable development progress is a social process that requires grassroots initiatives to reveal local context [141]. In Nepal, some have argued that a Community Forestry (CF) System could be utilized more fully to advance context-specific sustainable development targets [97,[142][143][144][145][146]], but we highlight some important caveats.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Review of the Millennium Project in Nepal

Vaidya

Mayer

2016

Sustainability

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"Our Common Future" harmonized development policies around a new sustainable development (SD) paradigm, and experts also emphasize the importance of a democratic and equitable approach to define and achieve sustainable development. However, SD targets and indicators are often defined by a suite of experts or a few stakeholder groups, far removed from on-the-ground conditions. The most common expert-led development framework, the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), promoted one set of targets and indicators for all developing countries. While progress towards these targets was routinely reported at the national scale, these targets may not reflect context-specific sustainable development. We evaluated the relevance and comprehensiveness of MDG 7 (environmental sustainability) for Nepal. Although Nepal has met most of the MDG 7 (e.g., forest cover, protected areas coverage, water and sanitation), on closer inspection these indicators do not provide adequate context for ensuring that these targets provide the intended levels of development. Simple forest cover and protected area indicators belie the dearth of ecological conservation on the ground, and water and sanitation indicators do not reflect the inequality of access based on poverty and regions. While the Millennium Development Goals align with broad sustainability concerns in Nepal, these indicators do not reveal its true development conditions.

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“…In much of the rest of the world, as the Catholic Aid Agency, CAFOD, points out, the wellbeing of many poor people has deteriorated as a result of factors beyond their control, such as environmental degradation, economic crises, and rapid changes in crop prices [15]. And even though poverty has been reduced in many nations, inequality has continued to persist and widen in many more; indeed, inequality increased in the majority of countries [16]. This is a problem first of all because there are complex interactions between inequality, poverty and social stability, and the relationship between inequality, growth, and social stability was left largely unexamined by the MDG's agenda.…”

Section: Millennium Development Goals (Mdgs) and Sustainable Developmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Twenty First Century Global Goal-Setting Addressing Global Inequality: An Interdisciplinary Ethical Analysis

O'Sullivan

2017

Religions

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This paper employs an interdisciplinary ethical analysis to evaluate how global inequality has been addressed by recent so-called "global goal-setting" initiatives. It seeks to contextualize these initiatives within theoretical paradigms of human rights and human development, and to utilize these paradigms in evaluating the successes and shortcomings of the goal-setting initiatives. It concludes that while these initiatives have achieved some success in addressing global inequality, much still remains to be done.

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The MDG Conundrum: Meeting the Targets Without Missing the Point

Cited by 141 publications

References 8 publications

The demographic transition and economic growth: implications for development policy

The demographic transition and economic growth: implications for development policy

Critical Review of the Millennium Project in Nepal

Twenty First Century Global Goal-Setting Addressing Global Inequality: An Interdisciplinary Ethical Analysis

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