Goals for Development : History, Prospects, and Costs
The Millennium Development Goals set quantitative targets for poverty reduction and improvements in health, education, gender equality, the environment, and other aspects of human welfare. At existing rates of progress many countries will fall shor...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/04/1758950/goals-development-history-prospects-costs http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14812 |
| Summary: | The Millennium Development Goals set
quantitative targets for poverty reduction and improvements
in health, education, gender equality, the environment, and
other aspects of human welfare. At existing rates of
progress many countries will fall short of these goals.
However, if developing countries take steps to improve their
policies and increased financial resources are made
available, significant additional progress toward the goals
is possible. The suthors provide a preliminary estimate of
the additional financial resources which would be required
if countries would work vigorously toward meeting the
Millennium Development Goals. Two estimates of the resource
gap are developed, one by estimating the additional
resources necessary to increase economic growth so as to
reduce income poverty, the other by estimating the cost of
meeting specific goals in health, education, and the
environment. Both estimates yield a figure in the range of
$40-$70 billion in additional assistance per year, which is
in line with estimates from other international development
agencies and which would roughly represent a doubling of
official aid flows over 2000 levels. While the authors
believe this is a reasonable first approximation of the
costs associated with achieving the Millennium Development
Goals, it should be interpreted with caution for several
reasons, including the lack of empirical data in many
countries to estimate the relationship between expenditures
on health or education and related outcomes, or the
relationship between investment and growth, the sensitivity
of the results to changes in the policy environment (both at
the macroeconomic and sector level, and with respect to
international trade), and opportunities for increased-and
more efficient-domestic resource mobilization. |
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