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Social Panorama of Latin America 2011 - November 2011
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In late November, ECLAC released the Social Panorama of Latin America 2011. The publication includes poverty and income distribution figures for each country in the region. The report finds that the poverty rate in Latin America decreased by 17% and the indigence rate fell by 10.3% between 1990 and 2010. This year's report features specific analyses on issues such as, social expenditures, fertility in Latin America, gaps in work and social protection programs, and youth in the Caribbean subregion. See the press release here and the briefing paper here. |
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Should Conditional Transfers Be Limited to the Poor? - November 2011
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This paper explores the poverty impact of categorical and poverty-targeted cash transfer programmes using simulations for 13 Latin American countries. The authors consider the pros and cons of a targeted programme that has higher administrative costs versus the higher costs of categorical programmes that have more beneficiaries. They conclude that targeted programmes have higher poverty impacts; however, countries with widespread poverty pockets may benefit more from categorically targeted programmes in particular geographic areas. See the full paper here. |
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Income Redistribution in Latin America - November 2011
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This paper released by the Society for the Study of Economic Inequity shows the results of a fiscal incidence analysis conducted with data from Argentina, Boliva, Brazil, Mexico and Peru. It investigates the validity of conventional thoughts which state that Latin American fiscal policy does little to redistribute income. The author finds that it is difficult to compare all Latin American countries because of vast differences and also finds that size of government and measures of fiscal spending do not necessarily predict the extent of redistribution in a given country. See the full paper here. |
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Measuring Education Inequality - November 2011
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This working paper investigates two measures of educational inequality: inequality in achievement and in opportunity. These parameters were applied to 57 countries using data from the Programme of International Student Assessment survey. The study finds that inequality of opportunity accounts for up to 35 percent of all disparities in educational achievement and that this inequality is greater in Latin America than in Asia, Scandinavia, and North America. See the full paper here. |
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Social Dimensions of Climate Change - November 2011
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This discussion paper was published by the UN Task Team on Social Dimensions of Climate Change. Whereas many current discussions on climate change are focused on the environment, technology and the economy, this paper aims to inform policy makers about the benefits of including social dimensions in climate change policies. It discusses the social drivers of climate change, analyses its potential social impacts and outlines how social dimensions can be applied to policies and practices. The paper also identifies knowledge gaps in the social, human and natural sciences that can be addressed in order to strengthen the policy response to climate change. A full copy of the paper is available here. |
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Odds of Achieving the MDGs - October 2011
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This working paper from the World Bank takes a look at how close countries are to achieving the MDGs by analyzing each country´s trajectory of progress from 1990 to the present. The analysis included 6 out of the 8 MDGs and 30 countries and territories from the LAC region. Based on the trajectories, countries were separated into the categories, on target, close to target and off target for each indicator. For those countries that are behind, the analysis showed that one-third are within 10 percent of being on target for the MDGs. For example, Bolivia is within 10 percent of being on track in achieving the MDG for reducing hunger, and Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Peru are within 10 percent for access to sanitation. See the full paper here. |
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Decreasing Inequality Under Different Governments in Latin America - October 2011
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This paper released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research examines a previous article that compared the success of populist and social democratic governments in Latin America in reducing inequalities. The previous work by McLeod and Lustig used the Socioeconomic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean (SEDLAC), while the present author, Juan A. Montecino, conducted a similar analysis using income inequality data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Whereas McLeod and Lustig found that the governments they characterized as social democracies were more successful in reducing inequalities, Montecino found the opposite result. In the remainder of Montecino's paper, he aims to illustrate the importance of considering data sources in research and reporting. See a full copy of the report here. |
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The Bolsa Família Programme and the Decent Work Agenda - October 2011
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This working paper published by the International Policy Center for Inclusive Growth and the ILO investigates the implications of Bolsa Família for social protection, entrance into the labor market, and protection against child labor among programme beneficiaries. It also looks at the role of complementary programmes in improving these factors. The paper reviews existing literature on the topic of conditional cash transfers and also includes an analysis of household survey data from Brazil. See the full report here. |
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The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2011 - October 2011
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This report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization, in collaboration with the WFP and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, highlights how international price volatility has affected food security worldwide. It discusses the short and long term impacts of food insecurity on economic development and possible policy solutions to promote long term investment in sustainable agriculture. The report includes an analysis of progress towards the MDG for reducing hunger. This shows that the LAC region as a whole currently has "insufficient progress to reach the target if prevailing trends persist." However, certain countries - namely Jamaica, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru - have met or are expected to meet the MDG for decreasing the proportion of undernourished people in their countries. See the full report here. |
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MDGs During Economic Uncertainty - September 2011
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UNDP recently released the publication, Towards Human Resilience: Sustaining MDG Progress in an Age of Economic Uncertainty. With lead author, Anuradha Seth, Senior Advisor on Macroeconomics with the UNDP Bureau of Development Policy, the report takes a closer look at recent financial and economic shocks and how they impact developing countries. More specifically, it explores the characteristics of economic vulnerability and policies that can assist vulnerable economies develop resistance to macro-level economic uncertainty so that human development progress and MDG achievement is not stalled. A full copy of the publication is available here. |
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The Crisis and Quality of Employment in MICs - September 2011
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This World Bank paper reviews evidence from 44 middle-income countries on how the recent financial crisis affected jobs and workers' incomes. The main finding is that the crisis affected the quality of employment more than the number of jobs. The report highlights (i) the limitations of focusing policy responses on maintaining jobs and providing alternative employment or replacement income for the unemployed, and (ii) the critical role of fast-track data systems that are capable of monitoring ongoing labor market adjustment during economic downturns, in supporting the design of effective policy responses. Read the full report here. |
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Idle Youth in LAC - August 2011
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This paper by Mauricio Cárdenas, Rafael de Hoyos, and Miguel Székely from the Brookings Institution, aims at improving our understanding of idle youth in Latin America, with special attention to those in the 15 to 18 age range, in order to identify adequate policies for supporting them and reintegrating them into society. According to their calculations with the most recent data available, 18.5 percent of Latin American youth in this age group (9.4 million individuals) are currently idle. During the last 20 years, their share of the population has been reduced by less than 6 percentage points but the absolute number of individuals has remained practically unchanged due to demographic growth. Read the full paper here. |
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Can Poverty Be Aggregated? - August 2011
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Nora Lustig in her paper "Multidimensional Indices of Achievements and Poverty: What Do We Gain and What Do We Lose?" calls our attention to the sharp disagreement on whether the various dimensions of poverty and well-being can be aggregated into a single, multidimensional index in a meaningful way. Is aggregating dimensions of poverty and well-being useful? Is it sensible? At the bottom of the discussion is a fundamental disagreement on the "legitimacy" of the weights used to aggregate dimensions of well-being. Future research will need to focus on how to identify weights in ways that are consistent 1) with welfare economics and 2) with theories of justice. Will we have to choose between the two? Read the full paper here. |
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Water and Social Equity - July 2011
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Social equity is the least understood of the 3 E's (equity, economic efficiency and environmental sustainability) in the concept of integrated water resources management. This new Global Water Partnership Technical Committee Background Paper No. 15, "Social Equity and Integrated Water Resources Management", sets out an overarching framework for the analysis of equity in the context of water development and management. It is intended as an aid to decision makers in designing policies, interventions, and programmes aimed at the equitable distribution of benefits from water resources. Latin America is widely cited in this document, highlighting examples from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, among other. Read the full paper here. |
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Economic Growth and Inequality - July 2011
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In July, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas released a policy brief written by Guillermo Perry and Roberto Steiner stating that high levels of inequality and significant social mobility problems still exist in Latin America. Beyond ethical implications, inequality has repercussions on macroeconomic, institutional and social variables. This policy brief analyzes some of the channels through which inequality affects these variables and offers public policy options that could foster improvements in the distribution of income and opportunities. These policy options could be discussed as a topic for regional agreement, with the objective of uniting political and economic forces to reduce the high levels of inequality facing the region. Read the full policy brief in English and in Spanish. |
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Monitoring the First MDG - July 2011
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This MDG 1 platform, financed by the Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation (AECID in Spanish) and coordinated by the ECLAC´s Social Development Division has been updated recently aiming at strengthening in-country capacities to design and implement policies and programmes to fight poverty, malnutrition and unemployment, based on an effective monitoring strategy to follow advances in the three targets that compose this goal from 1990 until now. The contents of this website range from the data bases on poverty and indigence, decent employment, and hunger and malnutrition disaggregated by geographic area, gender, education level, ethnicity, from 1989 until 2009. Access the platform here. |
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UN MDG 8 Report Highlights Pending Responsibilities - July 2011
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This fourth report of the MDG Gap Task Force challenges the international community and other stakeholders to intensify their efforts to realize the potential of the global partnership for development. There are many initiatives, large and small, official and non-State, to monitor their implementation, and, as the report highlights, the United Nations system is initiating a more comprehensive framework for holding all partners accountable for what they are doing and where they are falling short. Several countries of the LAC are mentioned as well as the Central American and Caribbean subregion. Read the full report here. |
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It is Time for a CCT Evaluation - June 2011
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This document published by the ECALC has as an objective to synthesize the experience of LAC with the conditional cash transfer programmes (CCTs) or "social co-responsibility" along the last 15 years. According to the ECLAC´s database of non-contributive social protection programmes, CCTs currently operate in 18 countries in the region and benefit up to 25 million households (around 113 million people), meaning, 19% of the LAC population at a cost revolving around 0.4% of the regional GDP. This document makes a balance of the main challenges present in terms of sustainability, legal framework, and participatory, institutional, and intersectorial arrangements. Read the full document in Spanish here. |
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Maintaining Progress Amid Turmoil - June 2011
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This month, the World Bank launched its 2011 Global Economic Prospects Report: Maintaining Progress Amid Turmoil, which projects slower but still solid growth in 2011 and 2012, with developing countries contributing almost half of global growth. This yearly report states that the LAC region rebounded from the crisis, growing at a 6% rate in 2010. GDP growth is expected to ease to a more sustainable 4.5% pace in 2011 before slowing toward 4% by 2013. Growth in the Caribbean will accelerate marginally to 4.1% in 2011, reflecting continued strong growth in the Dominican Republic and the reconstruction-led expansion in Haiti. Growth in Central America (excluding Mexico) is projected to accelerate to 4%, as labor markets in high-income countries improve only gradually, keeping remittances and tourism growth to a moderate pace. Read the full report here. |
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Assessing the Long-term Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Human Capital - June 2011
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Although there is significant evidence showing that CCTs have positive impacts on school participation, little is known about the long-term impacts of the programmes on human capital. This paper investigates whether cohorts of children from poor households that benefited up to nine years from Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia, attained more school and performed better on academic tests at the end of high school. Read the full paper here. |
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Mexico City's Government and the MDGs: New Challenges and Citizen Control - May 2011
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This report incorporates the analytical view of the Mexican civil organization Social Management and Cooperation (Gestión Social y Cooperación-GESOC A.C.), and has very valuable recommendations for social policy. The analysis comes from the application of the Policy Assessment Methodology and evaluates the quality of public policy design. It reveals that until 2009 there were 33 programs in Mexico City aligned with the MDGs and in average they only complied by 58% with the 7 criteria designated in the cited methodology. The best 3 criteria were Legality, Efficacy and Strategic Vision (with a compliance between 63% and 88%) while the worst were found to be Constant Improvement and Economic Efficiency (below 42%). Read the full report here. |
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Reporting Progress Focusing on Goal 7 - May 2011
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Last month, The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) updated its dataset on Protected Areas. Everybody can access the updated PA statistics hosted by WDPA on their webpage. There are two files, providing data on national statistics and global and regional statistics, respectively. According to the their 2011 MDG analysis, protected areas recorded in the WDPA now cover 12.7% of the world's land area outside Antarctica and 7.2% of coastal waters (up to 12 nautical miles). For the first this site does also look at marine areas beyond coastal waters and finds that only 3.5% of exclusive economic zones are protected. |
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The Juancito Pinto Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Bolivia: Analyzing the Impact of Primary Education - May 2011
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Although primary education enrolment rates in Bolivia are high, major gaps persist for those who face higher opportunity costs to study, such as girls and indigenous and rural students. To address this situation, a conditional cash transfer programme known as the Bono Juancito Pinto was designed for primary school students in 2006. The Canadian Foundation for the Americas with collaboration of UNDP Bolivia endorses this document, which presents policy options to target population groups with high education opportunity costs. Read the full report here. |
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Declining Inequality in Latin America (?) - May 2011
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To enrich the debate on Inequality in Latin America, Nancy Birdsall, Nora Lustig, and Darryl McLeod summarize recent findings on inequality in a new paper called Declining Inequality in Latin America: Some Economics, Some Politics, where they also present and discuss an assessment of how the type of political regime matters; they investigate the relationship between changes in inequality and changes in the size of the middle class in the region. The authors conclude with some questions about whether and how changes in income distribution and in middle-class economic power will affect the politics of distribution in the future. See the full report here. |
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Evidence on HIV Crucial for Strategic Planning in LAC - May 2011
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Authored by Rosalía Rodriguez-García, Michel Eric Gaillard, Alejandra Suarez Lissi, and Pedro Magne Condarco, this paper presents a simple tool that can be used to analyze the methodological quality of HIV data, its scope and limitations, and whether it can be accurately compared with other evidence. The tool, utilized as a questionnaire or checklist, first identifies the type of document containing the data; the status and means of its publication; the epidemiological design used; and the priority population. The paper also presents the results of implementing the tool in three Latin American countries: Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Evidence is crucial in strategic planning for HIV response as well as the monitoring of results. See the full report here. |
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Scaling Up Support for the MDGs at the Local Level - April 2011
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In 2011, UNDP and UNCDF put together a report on the importance of investing in MDGs at the local level and scaling up MDG services at the local level through both the national and subnational governments. This document argues that despite the positive progress toward the MDGs, this has been uneven, and large disparities still persist among and within countries. Almost all countries, including LDCs, low-income countries (LICs), and even middle-income countries, have individuals and groups who have been excluded from the benefits of development by reason of their geographic location, ethnicity, and gender. For the LAC Region, the report features experiences from Colombia and Haiti. Read the full report here. |
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Measuring MDG Achievements: Rate of Progress Matters Most - April 2011
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With this International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth paper, Dego Hailu and Raquel Tsukada from UNDP, introduce a methodology that measures the effort made by countries in achieving the MDGs. The methodology compares the rate of progress on MDG indicators in the period before and after the adoption of the MDGs. From the analysis of 40 indicators for 98 countries between 1990 and 2008, the paper concludes, among other things, that most progress was made towards Goals 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8. On Goal 1, more than 78 percent of the countries in their sample accelerated the reduction of the proportion of people living on less than US$1.25 (PPP) per day. On Goal 2, primary completion rates have accelerated in 70 percent of the countries. About 93.5 percent of the countries made significant progress on Goal 6, reversing "HIV prevalence among young people." Read the full paper here. |
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Assessing the Impact of Migration on Food and Nutrition Security - April 2011
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Migration and remittances in the developing world have increased dramatically in the last decade, just when more focus has been placed on reducing malnutrition to achieve the MDGs. But little empirical evidence exists on the link between migration and nutrition. A special issue of Food Policy tries to fill that gap by analyzing the links between migration and nutrition in seven countries: China, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Tajikistan, Tonga, and Vietnam. The research finds migration is linked to improvements in child growth. It also boosts a households' ability to deal with adverse food-related shocks, although their dietary habits and time devoted to health and care activities may suffer. |
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Green Economy and Poverty Alleviation - April 2011
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In February 2011, the UNEP released a report underlying sustainable public policy and the investment path on the Road to Rio+20. It states that 2% of global GDP can trigger greener, smarter growth while fighting poverty. The report sees a Green Economy as not only relevant to more developed economies but as a key catalyst for growth and poverty eradication in developing ones too, where in some cases close to 90 per cent of the GDP of the poor is linked to nature or natural capital such as forests and freshwater. This report, takes meeting and sustaining the MDGs - ranging from halving the proportion of people in hunger to halving the proportion without access to safe drinking water - as one aim. Read the full report here. |
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Inequality in Latin America. Breaking with History - April 2011
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This brief is the continuation of the 2004 World Bank regional report titled Inequality in Latin America: Breaking with History?, adding a decade of data to the 1990-2000 period. The original report concluded that although not easy, breaking with history was more than ever possible in the region. The updated data presented in this brief shows that it was possible, mainly due to changes in labor markets, a higher incidence of government transfers, and additional factors such as demographic changes. The decrease in inequality is driven mostly by improvements in labor income, particularly a reduction in skill premiums, reflecting improved access to education as well as other factors. See the full report here. |
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How Much, Since When and Why is Inequality Declining in LAC - April 2011
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The Tulane Economics Working Paper Series Nora Lustig, Luis F. Lopez-Calva and Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez, describe in-equality trends in the LAC region over the past decade. Between 2000 and 2009 the Gini coefficient declined in 13 of 17 Latin American countries for which comparable data exist. In depth country studies for Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru suggest that there are two phenomena which underlie this trend: (i) a fall in the premium to skilled labor (as measured by returns to education); and (ii) higher and more progressive government transfers. The fall in the premium to skills results from a combination of supply and demand factors and, in Argentina, and to a lesser extent in Brazil, from more active labor market policies as well. Read the full paper here. |
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Conditional Cash Transfers and Poor Households in Mexico - February 2011
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This paper, written by University of Maryland PhD student Claudia Vinay, examines whether Mexico's conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme, Oportunidades, has an effect on poor urban households' coping decisions when faced with an idiosyncratic shock. While evaluations have found the programme has a positive effect on outcomes such as school enrollment and health seeking behavior, they have primarily focused on rural areas and not examined whether the programme helps urban households cope with risks. This publication not only contributes to policy debate and dialogue, but will also help designing social protection programmes at the country level. Read the full paper here. |
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Measuring Poverty in Suriname - February 2011
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On August 2010, UNDP Suriname, CARICOM and the General Bureau of Statistics of Suriname organized a Conference on Poverty Measurement aimed at building consensus on the determination of an official poverty line for Suriname and related methods of poverty measurement including the introduction of measurement of multidimensional poverty. Consensus was achieved on the need to agree on a national definition of poverty and a national approach of poverty measurement, and the incorporation of a non-monetary approach to measure poverty in Suriname. Read the full report here. |
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Strengthening Local Governance to Achieve MDG 1 in Nicaragua - February 2011
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This report systematizes the experience of the Programme to Strengthen Local Governance, which had as an objective to contribute to the reduction of hunger, malnutrition, and poverty in the most vulnerable families in Nicaragua, through strengthening local governance in 54 municipalities. The action strategy of the Programme was based on the involvement of the United Nations Volunteers Programme (UNV). They formed a network of local development promoters and encouraged the organization and incorporation of citizens in local development. The report is available in Spanish. |
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USAID's 2010 LAC Databook - February 2011
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The Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean of the U.S. Agency for International Development presents the 2010 edition of "Latin America and the Caribbean: Selected Economic and Social Data" (the LAC Databook) with the goal of gathering and presenting the most up-to-date information possible from numerous sources. The 2010 edition includes the most recent data at the time of publication from a multitude of official country sources and leading international institutions. Data tables provide statistics useful for regional analysis; and analytical graphics are presented throughout the book. See the full report here. |
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State of the World's Children 2011: Adolescence - An Age of Opportunity - February 2011
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This UNICEF report examines the global state of adolescents; it outlines the challenges they face in health, education, protection and participation, and explores the risks and vulnerabilities of this pivotal stage. The accumulated evidence demonstrates that investing in adolescents' second decade is our best hope of breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty and inequity and of laying the foundation for a more peaceful, tolerant and equitable world. For this targeted population, UNICEF presents statistical tables for all indicators that measure MDG Progress in most Latin American countries. Read the full report here. |
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The HDI Tree: An Alternative Representation of the HDI - February 2011
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The HDI Tree, designed by César A. Hidalgo from MIT, Alex Simoes from Harvard and Isabel Meirelles from Northeastern University, is a visual representation that illustrates the Human Development Index together with its components and sub-components. To keep the information on the dimensions that get aggregated away when aggregated numerically, they proposed representing the HDI graphically as a tree, in which the aggregate value represented the trunk, and its components and sub-components represented higher and higher branches. Read the full report here and access the visualization tool here. |
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Youth Employment Transitions in Latin America - January 2011
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Using panel data from labour force surveys in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, this World Bank publication maps out young people's movements between school and work and between employment sectors to better understand the dynamics of youth employment, including where youth go upon leaving school, how long they spend in each state, and where they go upon leaving various employment states. The main conclusion of the study is that young people across all three countries follow a similar trend over their life cycle: they leave school to spend a short time in the informal sector, move to a formal position for longer spells, and finally become self-employed. Read the full study here. |
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New Comic Book "Score the Goals: Teaming Up to Achieve the MDGs" - January 2011
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This educational comic book, launched on January 2011, features 10 football UN Goodwill Ambassadors, who be-come shipwrecked on an island and have to tackle the eight MDGs along their journey towards being rescued. This comic book was produced in a "One-UN" spirit and is the result of successful inter-agency collaboration be-tween several UN partners. The comic book is primarily aimed at 8-14 year old children and provides a fun inter-active way to help them understand, familiarize and reflect about the eight MDGs as well as inviting them to take action through several activities. It is available in English and in Spanish. |
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Brazil's Bolsa Família and Citizen's Basic Incomes: A Misstep? - January 2011
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Written by Tatiana Britto, and Fábio Veras Soares, this paper discusses the link between Bolsa Família, Brazil's largest direct income-transfer programme, and the citizen's basic income as established in Brazilian legislation. A comparison of Bolsa Família's main features and the proposal for a basic citizenship income reveals significant differences as regards scope (targeted versus universal), target group (families versus individuals), and co-responsibilities (conditional versus unconditional). Read the full paper here. |
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The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development. The 2010 Human Development Report - November 2010
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This report looks back at 40 years of human progress in 135 countries – 92% of the world's population and its new indicators composing the Human Development Index (HDI) confirm that progress is possible even without massive resources. Looking at income inequality alone, 9 of the 15 countries with the largest HDI losses in the world from income inequality are in Latin America and the Caribbean. But inequality is narrowing in several countries, notably Brazil and Chile. Life expectancy climbed from 60 to 74 years in the region since 1970, reaching 79 in Chile, Costa Rica and Cuba. And school enrolment rose from 52 percent 40 years ago to 83 percent today—with several countries now approaching nearly full enrolment. See the full report here. |
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Steps Towards Achieving MDG 8: the 2010 Commitment to Development Index - November 2010
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The Center for Global Development (CGD) contributed to the debate G-20 by releasing the most recently updated Commitment to Development Index (CDI). The CDI annually ranks 22 wealthy countries based on their dedication to policies that benefit poorer nations. The 2010 edition finds most wealthy countries have modified their policies in recent years to make them more supportive of sustained growth and poverty reduction in the developing world. "At the Seoul Summit, development will be a key part of the agenda for the first time since the steering group for the global economy was expanded from the G-8 to the G-20 during the 2008 financial crisis," CGD President Nancy Birdsall said. See the Index here. |
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Parliamentary Engagement with the MDGs - November 2010
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UNDP and the Millennium Campaign prepared this manual as a guide for use in Parliaments and is intended to provide a set of practical tools for parliamentary engagement with MDGs. This manual makes available examples of mechanisms which have been used in Parliaments around the world in order to ensure that achieving the principles outlined in the MDGs remain at the forefront of the Parliamentary agenda, and gives tips for Parliaments on how to implement the mechanisms described in this handbook. Access the full handbook here. |
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New 2010 Report on Decent Work and Youth in Latin America and the Caribbean - November 2010
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Prepared by the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of the International Labor Organization (ILO), this report shows the educational and employment situation of young people in LAC, including a description of the most important indicators, an analysis on the causes and consequences, and the challenges that youth access to productive and decent work poses to governments and other stakeholders in the region, and possible courses of action to address them. According to the document, in Latin America the Working Age Population would consist of 104.2 million young people, of whom approximately 6.7 million are unemployed. See the full report here. |
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Achieving Debt Sustainability and the MDGs in Smal Island Developing Nations - October 2010
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This UNDP discussion paper, released in October 2010, explores critically the high levels of public debt and debt service across many small island developing states (SIDS). It asks to what extent debt may be hampering progress towards poverty reduction and the MDGs and puts forward a series of policy measures to support SIDS reduce their public debt burdens. See the complete paper here. |
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Global Poverty and the New Bottom Billion: Three-Quarters of the World's Poor Live in MICs - September 2010
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This paper by the Institute of Development Studies, argues that the global poverty problem has changed because most of the world's poor no longer live in poor countries meaning low-income countries (LICs). It suggests that nowadays simplistic assumptions/ classifications can be misleading because a number of the large countries that have graduated into the MIC category still have large number of poor people. In 1990, 93% of the world's poor people lived in LICs. In contrast, in 2007 it was estimated that three-quarters of the world's approximately 1.3 billion poor people now live in middle-income countries (MICs). Access the full document here. |
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Can the MDGs Provide a Pathway to Social Justice? - September 2010
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The MDG Achievement Fund together with the Institute of Development Studies published the document Can the MDGs provide a pathway to social justice? The challenge of intersecting inequalities. This report argues that the focus on aggregate progress and the use of national averages to measure countries' performance disguises a picture of uneven achievement that is characterized by deep disparities between social groups. Its author, aims at demonstrating that social exclusion and its resulting inequalities are not only rooted in the denial of people's social and economic rights, but are also inextricably linked to the lack of voice and participation of marginalized populations, thereby placing civil and political rights on a par with social and economic rights. See the complete version here. |
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Unfinished Business: Mobilizing New Efforts to Achieve the 2015 MDGs - September 2010
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A background paper prepared by the staff of the World Bank Group was published this month in light of the UN's MDG Summit. This document acknowledges that the LAC region has been a leader in designing social programs, which have helped cushion the impact of the financial crisis on the poor. Furthermore, it states that in LAC, the World Bank will pay particular attention to technology development and adoption, and addressing land inequalities. See the full paper here. |
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UNDP LAC Knowledge Sharing Series - September 2010
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The Knowledge Management (KM) team, together with the Country Offices and the Thematic Clusters, has undertaken the task of "Knowledge Sharing" guided by a basic principle: many of our experiences can be useful for others in the region. This series of publications is the conduit chosen to achieve these goals, and, of course, it reflects a joint effort that included the development of a methodology to expedite and facilitate the systematic organization and exchange of knowledge. Follow this link to read more. |
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Global Employment Trends for Youth - August 2010
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According to a new ILO report "Global Employment Trends for Youth 2010" released on August 12, 2010, about 81 million out of 620 million economically active young people (ages 15 to 24), were unemployed at the end of 2009, the highest level in two decades of record-keeping by the organization. The global youth unemployment rate increased to 13% in 2009 from 11.9% in the last assessment in 2007. Download the complete version here. |
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US Releases MDG Strategy - July 2010
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In July, 2010, the Obama Administration announced its MDG Strategy. Regarding policy options, this document focuses on promoting broad-based growth, empowering women and girls, nurturing well-governed institutions, and building sustainable service and delivery systems. In the words of an article published by the Brookings Institution, this represents a missed opportunity to deliver on Obama's commitment to invest $2 billion in a Global Fund for Education to achieve universal primary education. The document acknowledges that middle-income countries have achieved important development gains, "but pockets of poverty persist, reflecting high—and in some places, growing—inequality". Download the complete version of the US MDG Strategy here. |
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Youth and MDGs in Latin America and Caribbean - July 2010
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This document was prepared by CEDLAS and UNDP within the project "MDGs among the Youth in LAC (1990s-2008)" coordinated by UNDP. The document is part of UNDP LAC's contribution to the World Youth Conference 2010 and focuses on the situation of young people between 15 and 24 years within the MDG framework. It states that LAC´s younger population has experienced important advances since the 1990s, but they are still far from achieving the tar gets established by the MDGs. This analysis uses data from 23 countries in the period between 1999 and 2008. See the full document in Spanish here. |
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Report on Achieving the MDGs with Equality in LAC: Progress and Challenges - July 2010
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On July 1st, 2010, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) released the report "Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with equality in Latin America and the Caribbean: Progress and challenges." This document, prepared with-in the framework of the United Nations Regional Coordination Mechanism, examines the state of progress in the region towards the fulfillment of the MDGs; it acknowledges the impact of the volatility caused by the global crisis. The report approaches elements like employment and decent work, environmental sustainability, innovation and the technology gap and South-South cooperation a through a rights perspective. See the full report here. |
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Secretary General's MDG Report 2009 - June 2010
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"It is clear that improvements in the lives of the poor have been unacceptably slow, and some hard-won gains are being eroded by the climate, food and economic crises," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in the foreword to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2010, issued on June 23rd. But the report also cites big gains in cutting the rate of extreme poverty, getting children into primary schools, addressing AIDS, malaria and child health, and a good chance to reach the target for access to clean drinking water. See the full report here. |
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MDG Good Practices, by UNDG - June 2010
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The 2010 UNDG MDG Good Practice publication addresses specific constraints and challenges in achieving the Goals, in each country's context. It provides evidence on different approaches to achieving the various MDGs, demonstrating that, even under resource-constrained circumstances, there are innovative ways of overcoming obstacles to accelerate progress. There are 197 cases in including local, national, regional and global initiatives. From the Latin America and the Caribbean region there are 3 regional initiatives and 14 cases from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico. Download the complete version here. |
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UNDP's MDG International Assessment Report - June 2010
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UNDP prepared and recently launched an International Assessment of what it will take to achieve the MDGs by 2015. Drawing on studies from fifty countries, including from over thirty specially commissioned 2010 National MDG Reports, this document identifies what has worked and highlights common constraints on progress, at both the national and international levels. Based on this analysis, UNDP proposes an eight-point action agenda to accelerate and sustain MDG progress over the next five years. UNDP´s Administrator believes the International Assessment will better inform the outcome of the September 2010 UN High-Level Plenary Meeting on the MDGs. Access the full report here. |
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Poverty Lines Across the World - April 2010
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National poverty lines vary greatly across the world, from less than $1 per person per day to more than $40 (at 2005 purchasing power parity), according to a new working paper by Martin Ravallion. What accounts for these huge differences, and can they be understood within a common global definition of poverty? A new global definition of "weakly relative poverty" is shown to be consistent with both macro data on poverty lines across the world and micro data on subjective perceptions of poverty. Under the new definition, which combines absolute consumption needs with social-inclusion needs, half the population of the developing world is poor and half of those -- or one-quarter of the population -- are absolutely poor. A strong form of relativism, whereby the line is set at a fixed proportion of the mean income or consumption, only emerges in very rich countries. See the full paper here. |
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MDG Gap Task Force Report - October 2009
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Although development assistance rose to record levels in 2008, donors are falling short by $35 billion per year on the 2005 pledge on annual aid flows made by the Group of Eight in Gleneagles, and by $20 billion a year on aid to Africa, according to the 2009 Report of the MDG Gap Task Force. The Task Force brings together more than 20 UN agencies, the IMF, World Bank, WTO and OECD to track progress on the development partnership called for in the eighth Millennium Development Goal. See the full report here. |
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The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009 - October 2009
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More than halfway to the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), major advances in the fight against poverty and hunger have begun to slow or even reverse as a result of the global economic and food crises, a progress report by the United Nations has found. The assessment, launched by UN Secretary‐General Ban Ki‐moon in Geneva, warns that, despite many successes, overall progress has been too slow for most of the targets to be met by 2015. See the full report here. |
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Income and Beyond: Multidimensional Poverty in Six Latin American Countries - October 2009
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This paper presents empirical results of a wide range of multidimensional poverty measures for: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay, for the period 1992–2006. Six dimensions are analyzed: income, child attendance at school, education of the household head, sanitation, water and shelter. Over the study period, El Salvador, Brazil, Mexico and Chile experienced significant reductions of multidimensional poverty. In contrast, in urban Uruguay there was a small reduction in multidimensional poverty, while in urban Argentina the estimates did not change significantly. El Salvador, Brazil and Mexico together with rural areas of Chile display significantly higher and more simultaneous deprivations than urban areas of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. In all countries, access to proper sanitation and education of the household head are the highest contributors to overall multidimensional poverty. See the full paper here. |
