The first and most prominent United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG-1) has been widely celebrated. Yet, four reflections should give us pause. Although retaining the idea of "halving extreme poverty by 2015", MDG-1 in fact sets a much less ambitious target than had been agreed to at the...

Child poverty matters directly because children constitute a large share of the population, and indirectly for future individual and national well-being. Developed country measures of child poverty are dominated by income-poverty, although health and education are often included. But these are...

I consider two issues concerning how to monitor global poverty for the Millennium Development Goals, the selection of poverty lines, and the data sources for monitoring poverty over time. I discuss the choice of a single international line, converted using purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange...

In parallel to the substantial expansion in global economic transactions and growth during the 1990s, there is evidence that the number of poor has increased and that income disparity among and within countries grew as well. There is, however, considerably less evidence about the situation of...

There is an urgent need for more efficient and effective design, targeting and implementation of interventions to reduce regional imbalances in development. To do so, development agencies and practitioners need to articulate uneven regional development as regional inequalities in, and patterns...

"Quand les riches se font la guerre ce sont les pauvres qui meurent' Jean-Paul Sartre Le Diable et le Bon Dieu (1951) This paper reviews the effect of armed conflicts on development and, in particular, on the prospects of achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It explores the economic...

This paper describes work underway to enrich the present tools to measure women's empowerment -- particularly the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). The authors are developing an African Gender and Development Index (AGDI) on behalf of the Economic...

Health is both a direct component of human well-being and a form of human capital that increases an individual's capabilities. We argue that these two views are complementary and that both can be used to justify increased investment in health in developing countries. In particular, we argue that...

This paper argues for a broader emphasis on sustainable security and sustainable development, and for examining both opportunities as well as threats to security. The authors note that many of the significant risks arising from human and natural interactions do not emerge at global or local...

Mechanisms for ensuring government transparency and accountability have yet to become established in the Arab region, where oil rents and security rents have traditionally enabled governments to provide jobs and services without having to rely heavily, if at all, on raising revenue through...