Achieving the Millennium Development Goals:Lessons for Post-2015 New Development Strategies

Most of the reports on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) released by the multilateral development organizations and other agencies focus either on a single goal or on a few goals and examine global/regional trends or cross-country differences. There are few comprehensive cross-country analyses on the progress of the MDGs. This paper is an effort to reduce this gap. Using the database from the World Bank, an assessment is attempted on the progress towards key indicators between 1990 and 2010. This study also examines how different initial conditions have affected the speed of the progress and how overall improvement does not necessarily mean the narrowing of the inequality within and/or across the countries involved. In particular, low-income countries and fragile states are lagging behind in MDGs performance. We conclude by suggesting that two new purposes be incorporated in the post-2015 development strategy: Inclusive development and resilient society