How Are We Doing on Poverty and Hunger Reduction?: A New Measure of Country-Level Progress

Ugo Gentilini and Patrick Webb

Working Papers in Food Policy and Nutrition from Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy

Abstract: The Millennium Development Goal No. 1 (MDG-1) aims to halve the number of people affected by poverty and hunger by 2015. Poverty and hunger are closely related overlapping phenomena, but they are not identical. Each affects different sets of people or countries in different ways, and their resolution requires linked, but still distinct, policy and programmatic actions. As a result, 5 individual measures were identified to assess progress to the goal. These 5 indicators reflect somewhat different dimensions of the overall problem, and progress in one domain does not guarantee progress in each of the others. For example, reducing the number of poor people does not preclude an increase in the number of malnourished in the same country. Thus, a composite measure of MDG-1 progress (MoP) is proposed here that determines net advance across all 5 measures together. Expanding on the statistical methodology of the widely-used Human Development Index (HDI) the MoP can be used to assess, a) where countries stand in terms of progress to MDG-1 relative to other nations (a conventional ranking along the lines of the HDI); b) which have made adequate (or inadequate) progress in their own terms--progress relative to their own standing on the 5 measures in 1990; and c) which elements of hunger and poverty require the most urgent remedial action, since residual problems differ considerably from one location to another.

Keywords: poverty; hunger (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 I38 O20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2005-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nutrition.tufts.edu/documents/fpan/wp31-poverty_hunder_reduction.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.nutrition.tufts.edu/documents/fpan/wp31-poverty_hunder_reduction.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://nutrition.tufts.edu/documents/fpan/wp31-poverty_hunder_reduction.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: How are We doing on Poverty and Hunger Reduction? A New Measyre of Country-Level Progress (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fsn:wpaper:31

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Food Policy and Nutrition from Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Annie DeVane ().