No Goals at Half-time: What Next for the Millennium Development Goals? MDG1: Poverty and hunger Andrew Dorward and Colin Poulton

1
No Goals at Half-time What Next for the
Millennium Development Goals? MDG1 Poverty and
hunger Andrew Dorward and Colin Poulton
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Outline

1. The targets
2. Data Issues
3. Achievements
4. Underlying drivers
5. Critical roles of food agriculture in poor
   economies livelihoods
6. States and markets

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The MDG1 targets

• TARGET 1.A
• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of
  people whose income is less than 1 a day
• TARGET 1.B
• Achieve full and productive employment and decent
  work for all, including women and young people
• TARGET 1.C
• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of
  people who suffer from hunger

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Methodological Issues Poverty

• Conceptual difficulties with income poverty
• Defining the poverty line
• An arbitrary line!
• Depth of poverty?
• Counting those in poverty (data issues)
• PPP effects? (40)
• Numbers, proportions and geographical
  distributions global regions, urban / rural?
  (urban 10)
• Consumption data or national accounts? (impact on
  trends)

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Methodological Issues Employment

• TARGET 1.B
• Achieve full and productive employment and decent
  work for all, including women and young people
• working age in full employment what is best?
• people in low paid employment?
• people in vulnerable employment?
• Data frequency reliability

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Methodological Issues Hunger

• TARGET 1.C
• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of
  people who suffer from hunger
• Prevalence of under weight children under 5 years
  (stunting, wasting) (WHO/UNICEF)
• Proportion of population below minimum level of
  dietary energy consumption (FAO)
• Data frequency reliability
• Different definitions of hunger / food security
• No agreed figure for the number of hungry!

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Achievements Halve poverty incidence?
People in extreme poverty (lt 1.25 /day, 2005
prices) 1990 2005 Proportion is on
track 41.7 25.7 But . Numbers,
regions, food prices, urban poverty, data
(Chen Revallion, 2008
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Achievements Halve poverty incidence?
People in extreme poverty (lt 1.25 /day, 2005
prices) 1990 2005 Proportion is on
track 41.7 25.7 But Number
1.8 billion 1.4 billion Regions SSA 55
.7 50.3 100 mill South Asia 48.9 38.6
20 mill Eastern SE Asia 56.0 15.8 LAM
9.7 8.0 CIS 1.9 5.4 N Africa,
W Asia 3.5 3.8 Transition SE Europe
0.1 0.5
(UN MDG report, 2008, addendum)
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but... required changes in poverty rates for
MDG1
(UN MDG report, 2008)
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but .... food prices, urban poverty, recession,
data

• Higher food prices may push 100 million people
  deeper into poverty (Ivanic and Martin 2008, UN)
• Global slowdown
• Revised urban poverty lines add 100M to global
  1/day poor (mostly in South Asia Sub-Saharan
  Africa) but little effect on trends.
• Rural poverty has been falling faster than urban
  poverty 1993-2002 rural poor fell by 148M, urban
  poor rose 50M (Chen Ravallion, 2007).
• Poverty rates still twice as high in rural areas,
  75 of 1/day poor still rural in 2002 (81 in
  1993).
• National accounts data lower China poverty rates
  gains and hence global gains (Karshenas, 2003)

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but .... Depth of Poverty

• Changes in the number of Poor in the Developing
  World 1990-2004

-22 -15 -33 -16
(Ahmed et al. 2007)
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Achievements full equitable employment?
Proportion of employed people living below 1
(PPP) a day, 1997 and 2007
(UN MDG report, 2008)
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Achievements full equitable employment?
Proportion of men and women own account
contributing family workers in total employment,
2007
(UN MDG report, 2008)
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Achievements Halve of hungry people?
Proportion of children under age five who are
underweight, 1990 2006 ()
(UN MDG report, 2008)
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Achievements Halve of hungry people?

• of population below minimum dietary energy
  consumption

• Total numbers?
• Food price impacts?
• Rural / urban differences?

(UN MDG report, 2008)
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Achievements Halve of hungry people?

• IFPRI global hunger index, 2008

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Underlying drivers of MDG1 changes?

• Growth and income distribution for consumption
  poverty,
• Growth poverty / hunger relations?
• Growth explained by institutions geography
• Different stages of growth and basic economic
  structures are critical to growth processes
  constraints
• changing economy livelihood and sectoral mixes
  interactions
• Food and agriculture are critical in poor
  economies

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Critical roles of food agriculture in poor
economies livelihoods

• Importance of food in expenditures
• Direct importance of agriculture income to land
  labour
• Indirect importance of agriculture
• Critical for growth factor supply domestic
  demand for structural transformations out of
  agriculture

High potential staples Low potential staples
Broad Role Pro-poor growth Least cost welfare, growth platform
Countries with Minerals Support growth Subsistence support growth
Coastal, No minerals Drive support growth Subsistence support growth
Land locked No minerals Major driver then supporter Subsistence
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Critical roles of food agriculture in poor
economies livelihoods

• Importance of managing structural policy
  transitions
• Nutrition, health education impacts
• Challenges
• Food prices
• Energy prices
• Credit crunch
• Recession
• Climate change
• Policies investment

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The roles of states and markets

• States institutions and/ or activism?
• Critical questions for Growth, Agriculture,
  MDG1 (private sector goals for public
  organisations?)
• Conventional debates public goods, market
  failures, state failures
• Historical experience kick starting markets
• Institutional theory low level traps
• Current questions subsidies state interventions
  in food, fertiliser and
  finance
• Challenges crises, competing demands (interest
  groups, time periods), transitions, stability,
  probity, efficiency

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No Goals at Half-time What Next for the
Millennium Development Goals? MDG1 Poverty and
hunger Andrew Dorward and Colin Poulton
22
Real Commodity prices Jan 2006 to Sept 2008
Source World Bank Pink Sheets deflated by US CPI