Investing in Development
Report

Investing in Development

A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millenium Development Goals

Millenium Project
United Nations Millennium Project, 2005
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8

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The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for the period from 1990 to 2015 include halving the number of people who suffer from hunger and reducing the proportion of the world’s population subsisting on less than $1 a day. The MDGs also aim to lower mortality rates among young children and pregnant women, slow the advance of HIV/AIDS and malaria, promote gender equality, and establish universal primary education for boys and girls – all by 2015. The UN Millennium Project – an independent advisory body commissioned by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to recommend strategies for reaching Millennium goals – calls these objectives, “the most broadly supported, comprehensive and specific poverty reduction targets the world has ever established.” Progress toward achieving the goals by their target date remains spotty, however, as detailed in this 2005 report that identifies obstacles to the goals and provides a plan for accomplishing them by 2015. Though dated, the recommendations still constitute a valuable planning tool for developed and developing countries. getAbstract recommends this work to readers seeking a comprehensive summary of the UN’s ongoing efforts to help the world’s poorest people.

Summary

Overview

The primary purpose of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is to reduce extreme poverty, or “poverty that kills.” More than one billion people around the world still live in severe poverty, and they have few defenses against hunger, disease and environmental hazards.

The Millennium Development Goals represent a variety of investments in “capital inputs” for impoverished households, not just investments in the economic growth of low-income countries and regions afflicted by extreme poverty. The goals seek to develop three types of household capital: “human capital, natural capital and infrastructure.”

Reductions in hunger and disease, plus improved access to education, contribute to households’ human capital and build this population’s collective potential to pursue productive activity and economic growth. Declines in environmental hazards (pollution and other causes) add to natural capital, as does improved access to water, sanitation and adequate shelter. Just targeting a particular rate of economic growth will not be enough to achieve the MDGs; it will be necessary to attack the sources of extreme poverty.

Eight Sets of Goals

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About the Author

The UN Millennium Project is an independent advisory group that recommends the most-effective strategies for meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

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