**Table 4. Lagging countries within 10 percent of being on target in achieving the MDGs**

|**MDG 1.a Extreme**<br>**poverty**|**MDG 1.c Hunger**|**MDG 2.a Primary**<br>**education completion**|**MDG 3.a Gender**<br>**parity in primary**<br>**education**|**MDG 3.a Gender**<br>**parity in secondary**<br>**education**|**MDG 4.a Child**<br>**mortality under five**|**MDG 5.a Maternal**<br>**mortality**|**MDG 7.c Access to**<br>**safe drinking water**|**MDG 7.c Access to**<br>**sanitation**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Bangladesh|Bangladesh|Bhutan|Belize|Bulgaria|Algeria|Algeria|Azerbaijan|Botswana|
|Burkina Faso|Bolivia|Cambodia|Cape Verde|Congo, Rep.|Antigua and Barbuda|Bangladesh|Colombia|Brazil|
|El Salvador|Egypt, Arab Rep.|Comoros|Chile|Georgia|Argentina|Brazil|Eritrea|Dominican Republic|
|Guinea|Indonesia|Cuba|Congo, Dem. Rep.|Grenada|Belarus|Cambodia|Haiti|Morocco|
|India|Jordan|El Salvador|Congo, Rep.|Guatemala|Bhutan|Cape Verde|Indonesia|Peru|
|Lao PDR|Kenya|Gambia, The|Djibouti|Macedonia, FYR|Cape Verde|Dominican Republic|Iran, Islamic Rep.|Turkey|
|Lesotho|Nigeria|Ghana|El Salvador|Madagascar|Colombia|Egypt, Arab Rep.|Kiribati||
|Philippines|Pakistan|Guatemala|Grenada|Morocco|Dominican Republic|Ethiopia|Mali||
|Uganda|Rwanda|Honduras|Guatemala|Pakistan|Ecuador|Haiti|Myanmar||
||Zambia|Iraq|Guinea-Bissau|Russian Federation|Ethiopia|India|Venezuela, RB||
|||Jamaica|Jamaica|Senegal|Guatemala|Indonesia|||
|||Kyrgyz Republic|Lao PDR|Solomon Islands|Honduras|Lao PDR|||
|||Lebanon|Lebanon|Sudan|Indonesia|Mongolia|||
|||Lithuania|Maldives|Swaziland|Kazakhstan|Morocco|||
|||Macedonia, FYR|Mali|Vanuatu|Kiribati|Nepal|||
|||Mauritius|Mozambique|Zimbabwe|Kyrgyz Republic|Peru|||
|||Moldova|Nigeria||Liberia|Rwanda|||
|||Morocco|Paraguay||Libya|Syrian Arab Republic|||
|||Nepal|South Africa||Malawi|Tunisia|||
|||Philippines|St. Vincent and the Grenadin|es|Moldova|Yemen, Rep.|||
|||South Africa|Sudan||Montenegro||||
|||Tanzania|Suriname||Niger||||
|||Turkey|Swaziland||Paraguay||||
||||Tajikistan||Russian Federation||||
||||Tonga||Samoa||||
||||Uruguay||Sri Lanka||||
||||Vanuatu||St. Vincent and the Grenadin|es|||
||||Venezuela, RB||Suriname||||
||||||Syrian Arab Republic||||
||||||Tajikistan||||
||||||Turkmenistan||||
||||||Uzbekistan||||
|Sourc|e: Authors’ calcu|lations based on|ata from the Wo|ld Development|Indicators datab<br>Yemen, Rep.|se|||

Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from the World Development Indicators database.

**_Although many more developing countries are off track than on track to achieve the targets, two thirds or more of developing countries are actually on target or close to being on target,_** thanks to more than a decade of better policy and growth (figure 2). Many countries are making substantial progress in several MDGs: gender parity in primary education (89 of them), gender parity in secondary education (82), access to safe drinking water (66), primary completion rate (55), and extreme poverty (47). For instance, about 70 percent of developing countries have achieved or are on track to achieve the targets for gender parity in primary and secondary education. Although half the monitored countries (57) are off target for the primary education completion goal, two thirds of them (38) are very close to being on track.

Progress is mixed or poor on access to sanitation, maternal mortality, and child mortality. Unfortunately, more than 40 percent of low-income to upper-middle-income countries in the sample (58 countries) are significantly off target for access to sanitation.<sup>10</sup> 10 More regional details are available in World Bank (2011) .

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