Millennium Development Goals

Millennium Development Goals

Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger is the first Millennium Development Goal. One of the targets within this goal is the halving of the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. In addition to broader approaches, the Sachs Report (for the UN Millennium Project) proposes a series of "quick wins", approaches identified by development experts which would cost relatively little but could have a major constructive effect on world poverty.


Some of these "quick wins" are these such as directly assisting local entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and create jobs, access to information on sexual and reproductive health, drugs for AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, free school meals for schoolchildren, legislation for women’s rights, providing soil nutrients to farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, access to electricity, water and sanitation, upgrading slums and providing land for public housing, among other things.
Barriers to economic development and poverty reduction


In the 1950s and 60's economists expected that countries throughout the world would follow a the same basic pattern for economic development. It was thought that with some initial capital investment, nations would continue on a path from pre-industrial agrarian societies to industrialization. However, many today hold that these theories are highly misleading when they are applied to developing nations today.


The situation faced by developing nations in modern times are very different than those faced by the developed nations when they were going through economic development. Among the new realities facing developing nations are a much larger population, fewer natural resources, and a poorer climate. It may also be important to note that today’s developed nations did not have other powerful developed nations to contend with during their early process of development. This means that it may be much more difficult for poor nations today to achieve economic development.