# **I. Introduction**

One puzzle about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) befuddles greatly. Why has the overall progress toward the MDGs been so mixed when the common observation is that the economic performance of developing countries was markedly better for more than a dozen years after the mid-1990s? The external environment had been favorable until the recent economic crisis—trade was expanding, export prices were buoyant, and foreign aid and debt relief were being scaled up. And economic growth for a very broad range of developing countries was accelerating because of better policies and institutions. This was true not only for large middleincome countries like China and India but also for poor countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.<sup>2</sup> Furthermore, because of improved policies and institutions, the recent crisis was different for low-income countries, which did relatively well. There was no widespread failure in domestic policy. Growth remained positive. And the poor were protected by increased spending on social safety nets.<sup>3</sup> So the question that begs answers is—where did all the economic progress go, and what did it buy for the MDGs?

The answers lie underneath the global numbers. To solve this puzzle and to assess the prospects of countries reaching the goals in the few years remaining until 2015, this paper looks at the following questions: How many countries are attaining the goals, and how many are behind? Are lagging countries far from the goals? Are there any already close? Why are some countries behind? And what factors are key to improving the odds that lagging countries can reach the goals? We investigate these questions in this paper and argue that answers from available information are surprisingly hopeful.

The global numbers tell a familiar, mixed story in two ways.<sup>4</sup> In terms of the remaining distance toward the 2015 targets (figure 1a), the latest information confirms that progress remains strong on gender and education, access to safe drinking water, extreme poverty, and hunger. In terms of the distance to the trajectory required to be on target (figure 1b), the world is on track by current trends (or historical growth rates) to reach the global target of cutting income poverty in half by 2015. Thanks to rapid growth in China, the East Asia and Pacific region has already halved extreme poverty. Developing countries will also likely achieve the MDGs for gender parity in primary and secondary education and for access to safe drinking water, and will be close on hunger and the primary education completion rate. By both yardsticks, distance to the goals or distance to be on track, progress continues to lag in health-related development outcomes, such as child and maternal mortality and access to sanitation. New data and methodologies indicate much more progress than previously thought in reducing maternal mortality, but that is still the MDG that lags the most (Hogan _et al._ 2010). On current trends, the world will miss these three targets by 2015. Moreover, low-income countries, particularly fragile states and those in Sub-

> 2 This observation is documented widely. See, for example, World Bank (2008) on the decoupling of trend growth for developed and developing countries. For Africa, See  Arbache, Go, and Page (2008) and Ndulu (2008). 3 World Bank (2010) discussed the impact of the recent global economic crisis on the MDGs. 4 For more details, see World Bank 2011 and United Nations 2010.

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