The Progress Made by Developing Countries in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals - Example

Running Head: ECONOMICS OF DEVELOPMENT The Progress made by Developing Countries in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals Student’s Name Course Tutor’s Name Date The Progress made by Developing Countries in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals The millennium development goals (MDGs) are a set of ten time-bound targets that were agreed upon by heads of the United Nations (UN) member states and adopted in a UN Millennium Summit in 2000. The targets were organised into eight priority areas in 2001. The goals were meant to be achieved by December 31, 2015. However, from different reviews carried out by experts and non-experts, most of the goals will remain unmet when the deadline expires. All the eight goals were meant to provide a framework for development especially for the developing countries (McArthur, 2013). Yet, when they were agreed upon, the UN member states did not agree on a plan or a budget for achieving the MDGs. Each country was therefore left to figure how it would achieve the MDGs. This paper will review the progress of the developing countries in three MDGs namely poverty alleviation, promoting education, and improving health in East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa regions. MDGs’ progress Prior to 2000, the world lacked a common framework for enhancing development (McArthur, 2013). Yet, the world, and especially the developing countries, was increasingly facing social and economic challenges. In Africa for example, McArthur (2013) notes that life expectancy was dropping, child mortality was on the rise, poverty was also on the rise and there was a generation that had stagnated. In Latin America and Asia, growing inequality and economic crises were also threatening the economic and social stability of both regions (McArthur, 2013). However, with the adoption of MDGs in 2002, there was a glimmer of hope that indeed, a change for the better would be realised. Poverty Alleviation One of the critical MDGs was poverty alleviation, and by 2005, Sachs and McArthur (2005, p. 348) noted that there was quite a great disparity in attaining this MDG in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The two authors noted that Asia was performing impressively in poverty alleviation, while Sub-Saharan Africa was still lagging behind. At the time, Sub-Saharan Africa was registering rising extreme poverty. As shown in the excerpt from Waage et al. (2010) below, the poverty alleviation goal was supported by several targets, which included halving the number of people who live below the equivalent of one US dollar a day. The second target under the poverty alleviation goal was to achieve full employment for all (Waage et al., 2010, p.4). Excerpt from Waage et al. (2010, p.4) on the poverty alleviation goal Gauging poverty eradication based on the first indicator which is the people living below US$ 1 purchasing power parity, it is rather obvious that East Asia is doing very well compared to Sub-Saharan Africa. According to the World Bank (2015), the number of people living on less than a dollar a day in East Asia reduced from 78% in 1981 to an estimated 8% in 2011. In other words, the East Asia region has succeeded in attaining the first indicator in the poverty alleviation MDG. It is worth noting that while the region is performing impressively, individual countries such as the Philippines may still need to work towards halving the poverty incidence in their respective populations (United Nations, 2010 p. 25). In Sub-Saharan Africa however, the poverty situation has worsened. For example, in 1981, about 212 million people were living on less than US$ 1 a day in Sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, statistics by the United Nations (2010, p. 23) indicate that the number of people living below what is termed as the ‘poverty line’ has been on a steady incline in the 1990s and 2000s, reaching 383 million people in 1999 and 388 million people in 2005. Since poverty is a local phenomenon which must be tackled on every country’s local front, it is argued that the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa is largely because most countries have not embraced poverty reduction measures. As well, poor governance, absence of infrastructure, and wide economic inequalities continue plaguing individual countries, and by extension the Sub-Saharan Africa region (United Nations, 2010, p. 24). The second indicator (poverty gap ratio) is defined as the “mean shortfall of the total population from the poverty line (counting the non-poor as having zero shortfall), expressed as a percentage of the poverty line” (UN Statistics Division, 2015, para. 1). In East Asia, the poverty gap was at 3.9%, while Sub-Saharan African was much worse at 20.5 percent in 2001 (Spehlivan, 2007, p.7). While the poverty gap had been on a decline in East Asia, the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa is different, with the region having registered an increasing poverty gap in the 1990s and 2000s. Under the poverty alleviation goal, the second target seeks to attain “full and productive employment and decent work for all” (Waage et al., 2010, p.4). In East Asia, different authors have argued that while attaining full employment is practically impossible due to frictional unemployment, the absence of good employment policies by respective governments has undermined any chance of significantly reducing unemployment in the region (Mazumdar, 2009, p.1). It is estimated that in total, East Asia has the highest number of unemployed people at 39.4 million. Despite the high numbers, the aforementioned unemployed people represent a 4.5% rate of unemployment (The Globalist, 2014, para. 4). Felipe (2012, p. 38) notes that the entire Asia region had 500 million unemployed people in 2006. Countries like Philippines continue registering high unemployment numbers and that means that the countries’ purchasing power is significantly reduced, which in essence has an impact on poverty levels. In Africa, the situation is worse because as the International Labour Organisation (2015) indicates, the unemployment rate was at 7.48 % in 2012, something that is brought about by population explosion and the inability of Sub-Saharan countries to absorb the people who have employable skills into the economy. Therefore, compared to East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa’s unemployment rate was worse off, hence an indication that the latter is far from meeting the second target under the poverty alleviation goal compared to the former. Promoting education MDG 2 sought to “achieve universal primary education” and is largely seen as one way of promoting education (Maeda, 2015, para. 1). The target for the ‘universal primary education’ goal is to “ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a course of primary schooling” (Maeda, 2015, para. 1). Statistics availed by the World Bank reveal that by 2012, East Asia had performed impressively on MDG 2 and had attained a 100 percent primary completion rate. The World Bank (2013, para. 1) however notes that a lot more needs to be done in order to attain gender parity in enrolment in East Asia as it appears that more girls get a chance to study compared to the boys. This is different from Sub-Saharan Africa, which by 2012, was reportedly registering a 70% primary school completion rate (Maeda, 2015, para. 3). A great percentage of Sub-Saharan Africa’s 47 countries are seriously off the MDG 2 target if the World Bank’s (n.d.) statistics are anything to go by. Writing in defence of the Sub-Saharan Africa region and the entire African continent, Easterly (2009, p. 29) indicates that African countries not only have the furthest to go in an attempt to attain universal primary education, but have also attained the greatest progress in the shortest time especially when compared to the rates of similar achievements by the developed countries. Easterly (2009, p. 29) therefore argues that the great strides being made by African countries should not be measured against other countries, whose political, geographical, economic and historical aspects are different from Africa’s. On the contrary, the author notes that African countries should be perceived as a success story considering the absence of basic educational infrastructure that was the norm in most Sub-Sahara African countries before the 1990s. Easterly (2009, p. 29) notes that Sub-Saharan Africa countries are building schools, partnering with other stakeholders to offer free primary education, allocating funds to financing education, making education policies that enhance more education uptake among populations, and even using enticements such as school feeding programs to enhance the numbers of school going-age children who enrol in schools. Despite all that, there are historical, economic, geographic and even cultural hindrances that individual countries may have to deal with before the universal goal of primary school enrolment is achievement. Improving health MDGs 4, 5 and 6 collectively address health improvement, with MDG 4 targeting the reduction of child mortality by two-thirds by 2015 (World Bank, p. 10). MDG 5 targets improving maternal health care through reducing by three-quarters the number of mothers who die while giving birth and providing universal reproductive health care to all mothers. On its part, MDG 6 seeks to combat malaria, HIV/AIDS and other diseases by reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, giving universal access to HIV/AIDs patients, and reversing malaria and other disease incidences (World Bank, 2014, p. 10). According to Cohen et al. (2014, p. 17), only 27% and 12 % of the Sub-Saharan Africa countries were on track for MDG 4 and MDG 5 respectively. The off-track label that has been used on countries that have not performed impressively has however been criticised for failing to acknowledge that the economic and social circumstances in Africa are different from those in any other part of the world. By 2010, East Asia child deaths for every 1000 live births were 14 against a set target of 15 deaths (United Nations, 2014, p. 24). This means that East Asia had met and exceeded its MDG4. Sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand was still lagging behind, and by 2012, was still registering 98 deaths per 1000 live births against a set target of 50 deaths (United Nations, 2014, p. 24). In other words, Sub-Saharan Africa had not developed the needed health strategies that would enable it reduce child mortality rates as envisaged in MDG 4. In relation to MDG 5, Sub-Saharan Africa was still performing poorly compared to East Asia. Against a set target of 300 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, Sub-Saharan Africa registered 300 more deaths in 2013 (United Nations, 2014, p. 28). East Asia did not meet its maternal deaths either, but just missed it by 3 deaths only based on a target of 30 deaths per 100,000 live births. It is worth noting that in the 1990s, East Asia recorded just 95 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, while Sub-Saharan Africa recorded more than ten times that number at 990 maternal deaths for 100,000 live births. Thus, Sub-Saharan Africa may not have met its MDG 5 target, but the reduction of the of number maternal deaths is an impressive achievement indicative of the fact that progress in specific health indicators is being made in the region. The results for MDG 6 are different for various regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. In Southern African for example, the incidence of HIV/AIDs was at 1.02 in 2012 in every 100 people, while in East, West and North Africa, the incidence of the disease was 0.29, 0.21 and 0.01 respectively (United Nations, 2014, p. 34). In East Asia, the prevalence of HIV/AIDs was per 100 people was at 0.01 in 2012, something that has not changed since 2001. In Africa, there is little doubt that efforts to combat HIV/AIDS have borne fruits seeing that in 2001, there were times when the disease prevalence was as high as 1.98 per every 100 people. Compared, the two regions have arguably done impressively in reducing new infections. However, since the disease burden was higher in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2001, it is possible that African countries put in more effort in curbing the spread of the disease. Whether the two regions have halted and reversed the spread of the disease is something that cannot be independently verified in this paper owing to the absence of statistics. In conclusion, it is worth observing that East Asia seems to have performed impressively in all three development areas as envisaged in the MDGs compared to Sub-Saharan Africa. However, for the sake of fairness, it is important to acknowledge that the Sub-Saharan Africa region and East Asia have different economic, social, geographical, historical and cultural factors – all of which combined could have affected how countries in each region pursued the targets set in each MDG. Therefore, as indicated by some authors featured in this paper, it is important to consider where each of the countries required to pursue MDG targets was in all eight MDG-focus areas before declaring them as off-track or unable to meet the targets. References Cohen, R.L., Alfoso, Y., Adam, T., Kuruvilla, S., Schweitzer, J., & Bishai, D. (2014). Country progress towards the millennium development goals: Adjusting for socioeconomic factors reveals greater progress and new challenges. Globalisation and Health, 10(67), 1-19. Easterly, W. (2009). How the millennium development goals are unfair to Africa. World Development, 37(1), pp. 26-35. Felipe, J. (2012). Inclusive growth: Why is it important for developing Asia? Cadmus, 1(4), 36-58. International Labour Organisation. (2013). Global employment trends 2013: Facts and figures for sub-Saharan Africa. Retrieved from http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/global-employment-trends/2013/WCMS_202322/lang--en/index.htm Maeda, H. 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