Goals for Development: History, Prospects, and Costs

By S. Devarajan, Margaret J. Miller, E. Swanson. 2002

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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. Devarajan, Miller, and Swanson 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. This paper - a product of the Office of the Vice President, Human Development Network, and the Development Data Group - is part of a larger effort in the Bank to accelerate progress toward the Millennium Development Goals.

Subfields: Development, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ef1030e6ee200921d7cebdadac5b9c6aff2d5f47

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Citations in the corpus

Investment Needs to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals Understanding the Billions and Trillions (2015, methodology): “Recognizing this point, Devarajan et al. (2002) present their needs assessment for poverty and the separate analysis for sector investment needs as two alternative MDG costings.”
An Aid-Institutions Paradox? A Review Essay on Aid Dependency and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa (2006, background): “Several new studies have suggested that at least a doubling of overseas development assistance (ODA) from 2000 levels is necessary as a precondition for meeting international development targets (Zedillo Panel 2001; Devarajan et al. 2002).”
Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth (2003, background): “A World Bank (2001a) publication, “Ten Things You Never Knew About the World Bank,” advertised ten accomplishments of the organization—and all ten involved volumes of assistance for different purposes.”
Towards action on social determinants for health equity in urban settings (2008, background): “…countries, more aid and debt relief 0.7% of GDP = US$ 175 billion, addition = 85 Commitment at United Nations in 1972 All MDG targets 40–60 Devarajan et al. (2002) (as above) All MDG targets 48 in 2006 50 in 2010 74 in 2015 Sachs, J S (2005), The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen…”
Foreign aid and governance in Africa (2016, unknown): “First, the financing gap and/or ‘Big-Push’ models with corresponding scholarly feedbacks or reactions (Boone, 1996; Collier et al., 2001; Devarajan et al., 2002; Sachs, 2005; Kraay & Raddatz, 2005; Masud & Yontcheva, 2005).”
The Trouble with the MDGS: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success (2007, background): “Of note, and relevance for later sections of this paper, are the various estimates for costing universal primary education (UPE) or Education for All (EFA), including $9 billion per year (Delamonica et al. 2001, for Unicef) and $10-15 billion (Devarajan et al. 2002).”
Can the West Save Africa (2008, unknown): “GLOBAL ECONOMY AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM policy advocates for an increase in foreign aid to Africa have cited this model explicitly (Devarajan et al. 2002 at the World Bank; Blair Commission on Africa, 2005; Sachs, 2005; Sachs, 2008; Collier, 2007).”
The Long Walk to School: International Education Goals in Historical Perspective (2004, background): “Achieving these new goals is unquestioningly taken to be a matter of getting serious(World Bank 2002a), to be understood as a combination of nancial assistance from donors and political commitmentfrom developing-country leaders (Devarajan et al. 2002).”
From Universal Values to Millennium Development Goals: Lost in Translation (2006, background): “The dangers and considerations to be dealt with here are well addressed by Devarajan et al. (2002), Reddy and Heuty (2005) and Vandemoortele and Roy (2004).”