Millennium Development Goals

More Information • Millennium Development Goals • World Development Indicators 2004  • The Costs of Attaining the Millennium Development Goals (45K PDF) • Education for All • Health, Nutrition & Population Millennium Development Goals • The Environment and the Millennium Development Goals • Financing for Development • Achieving Development Outcomes: The Millennium Challenge (640K PDF) - prepared by the independent Operations Evaluation Department • Development Committee documents • World Bank Projects related to the MDGs

In September 2000, the United Nations Millennium Summit brought together the largest gathering of world leaders in history.

In the summit's final declaration, signed by 189 countries, the international community committed to a specific agenda for reducing global poverty.

This agenda listed eight Millennium Development Goals which not only identified the gains needed but quantified them and established yardsticks for measuring improvements in people's lives.

The goals, listed  below, today guide the efforts of virtually all organizations working in development and have been commonly accepted as a framework for measuring development progress.

Goal 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.
• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

• Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

• Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015.

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

• Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.

• Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
• Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the losses of environmental resources.
• Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
• By 2020 to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

• Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
• Address the special needs of the least developed countries
• Address the special needs of landlocked countries and small island developing States.
• Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.
• In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth
• In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
• In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications.

A recent World Bank report, Partnerships in Development, Progress in the Fight Against Poverty found that uneven progress was being made in terms of meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

The report says if current trends in growth and poverty reduction continue, the goal for eradicating extreme income poverty is within reach. But it may well be the only goal to be attained, for many of the other non-income goals – such as universal primary education, promoting gender equality and reducing child mortality – current rates of progress are too slow.

Below is an assessment from Partnerships in Development, Progress in the Fight Against Poverty, on the current status of the eight MDGs.

Goal One: Halve extreme poverty and hunger.

Objective

Halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty – and those suffering from hunger – by 2015 (from 1990 levels).

Progress on halving extreme poverty

In 1990, 28.3 percent of the people in low and middle-income countries lived on less than $1 a day. By 1999 the share had fallen to 21.6 percent, driven mainly by strong growth in China and India. But if the poverty line is drawn at $2 a day, which is closer to a practical minimum in middle-income countries, an estimated 2.7 billion people are this year estimated to be living on less than $2 a day. This is more than half the population of the developing world. The number of people living on less than $2 a day is slated to rise in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. By 2015, if present trends continue, the poverty rate measured at this higher cutoff will have fallen no more than 40 percent from its 1990 level.

East Asia and the Pacific prove winners

East Asia and the Pacific recorded the fastest economic growth over the period. GDP per capita growth rose by 75 percent, while the share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 29.4 percent to 14.5 percent between 1990 and 1999.

Africa and the former Iron Curtain countries struggle

In Sub-Saharan, where the GDP per capita fell by 5 percent, the extreme poverty rate rose from 47.4 percent in 1990 to 49 percent in 1999. The numbers are believed to be still rising.

The economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which were undergoing a transformation to market-based systems suffered an even sharper decline in income than Sub-Saharan Africa. Their poverty rates more than doubled in the early to mid-1990s.But poverty rates have been dropping more recently, returning in many cases to pre-transition levels.

Overall chance of success: Good, if the poverty line is drawn at $1 a day. If projected growth rates remain on track, global poverty rates will fall to 12.5 percent by 2015- less than half the 1990 level and 500 million more people will move out of extreme poverty. But this global figure will be driven by the success of China and India.

Progress on reducing hunger and malnutrition

On current trends the goal the goal of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger will not be met.

Since 1990-92, the number of undernourished people in developing countries has fallen by 20 million, but the prevalence of undernourishment fell by only 3 percentage points. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that in 1998-2000, 799 million people, or 17 percent of the population in developing countries, were undernourished. This does not include the 30 million undernourished people in the transition economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, or the 11 million in high-income countries.

Regional trends show the greatest progress in East Asia and the Pacific, but malnutrition rates remain high in South Asia and are rising in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

The Millennium Declaration resolved that all children would be able to complete a course of primary education by 2015.

Three regions –East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean – are on track to achieve the goal. But the other three regions, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, which have 150 million children of primary school age, are in danger of falling short. Sub-Saharan Africa lags farthest behind, with little progress since 1990. South Asia also has chronically low enrollment and completion rates. The Middle East and North Africa regions, is also likely to fall short even though it has relatively higher enrollment rates than the other two regions in danger of missing the target.

Goal 3: Empower women and promote equality between women and men

This goal calls for eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005- and at all levels of education by 2015. By 1999 (the most recent available figures) all regions except Latin America and the Caribbean remained nine points short of the 2005 target. The differences between boys' and girls' schooling are greatest in regions with the lowest primary school completion rates and the lowest average incomes. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the ratio of girls to boys in primary and second enrollments has barely changed since 1990, and in 1998 it stood at 80 percent. In South Asia, progress has been greater, but girls' enrollments reached only 78 percent of boys' in 1998.

Goal 4: Reduce under five child mortality by two-thirds

Despite rapid improvements in cutting the mortality rates for infants and children under five in the years leading up to 1990, progress slowed almost everywhere in the 1990s. Unless current trends are altered, this goal will not be met. No region, except possibly Latin America and the Caribbean, is on track to achieve this target. Progress has been particularly slow in Sub-Saharan Africa, where civil disturbances and HIV/AIDS have driven up rates of infant and child mortality in many countries.

Infant and child mortality rates have fallen by only 12 percent since 1990 in low-income countries and by 36 percent in middle-income countries. Within countries, there is evidence that improvements in child mortality have been greatest among the better off. In Bolivia, which is nearly on track to achieve the target, under-five mortality rates fell by 34 percent for the wealthiest fifth of the population buy by only 8 percent for the poorest fifth.

Goal 5: Reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters

The most recent global estimates of maternal mortality suggest that about 500,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth in 2000, most of them in developing countries. For the goal to be achieved, women will need much greater access to modern health services.

The share of births attended by skilled health staff provides a good index of where the need is greatest. Only 58 percent of women in developing countries give birth with the assistance of a trained midwife or doctor. In Latin America and the Caribbean, where the share of births attended by skilled health personnel is high, maternal mortality is fairly low. But in Africa, where skilled attendants and health facilities are not readily available, it is very high. Maternal morality outcomes are difficult to measure, and the lack of reliable data across countries and over time limits the ability to track progress towards this goal. But current trends suggest that the goal will almost certainly not be met.

Goal 6: Reverse the spread of diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and malaria

Epidemic diseases exact a huge toll in human suffering and lost opportunities for development. In Africa, the spread of HIV/AIDS has reversed decades of improvements in life expectancy, leaving millions of children orphaned. It is draining the supply of teachers and eroding the quality of education.

In 2002, 42 million adults and 5 million children were living with HIV/AIDS-more than 95 percent of them in developing countries, 70 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa. There were almost a million new cases in South and East Asia, where more than 7 million people are infected. Current projections suggest that by 2010, 45 million more people in low and middle-income countries, will become infected-unless the world mounts an effective campaign to halt the disease's spread and to meet this goal.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Environmental conditions need to be closely monitored to ensure sustainable development. These conditions include changes in forest coverage, biological diversity, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the plight of slum dwellers in rapidly growing cities, and the limited availability of adequate water and sanitation services.

A lack of clean water and basic sanitation is the reason that diseases transmitted by feces are so common in developing countries. In 1990, diarrhea led to 3 million deaths, 85 percent of them among children. Between 1990 and 2000 about 900 million people obtained access to improved water sources, just enough to keep pace with population growth. In 2000, 1.2 billion people still lacked access to an improved water source, 40 percent of them in East Asia and the Pacific, 25 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The number of people with access to safe drinking water must increase by 270,000 a day to meet the 2015 target for halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. This rate is lower than the daily increase achieved in 1980s, but many of those connections did not provide sustainable access to drinking water. And it is higher than the performance levels of the 1990s.

Goal 8: Create a global partnership for development, with targets for aid, trade and debt relief.

Goal 8 commits wealthy countries to work with developing countries to create an environment for rapid, sustainable and broad-based development. Each have distinct responsibilities in accelerating progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

Last updated October 2004