Millennium goals - ReviseSociology

Some examples of social indicators of development include:

Education – for example how many years of schooling children have.
Health – often measured by life expectancy.

Employment Rates
Gender equality
Peacefulness

Democracy
Corruption
Media freedoms

Civil Rights
Crime/ social unrest
Suicide Rates

Composite indicators of all of the above

A well known example of a social indicator of development is the Human Development Index, which combines one economic indicator (Gross National Income) with two social indicators: life expectancy and years of schooling into one score and ranks countries accordingly.

Social Indicators of development give a much broader picture of how developed a country is compared to purely economic indicators such as GDP which merely focus on economic productivity. Social indicators are more useful in showing us the extent to which income generated in a country actually benefits ordinary people.

The World Bank provides the most comprehensive data on social indicators of development, and you can also find many specific social indicators of development within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The Sustainable Development Goals selectively uses some World Bank data and is a much more accessible way for the lay person to monitor social development precisely because it is more limited in scope than the World Bank data.

This post introduces students to the specific indicators which institutions such as the World Bank and United Nations use to measure how ‘developed’ a country is, and the main indices which are used to compare the levels of development of different countries.

For each indicator, firstly we look at some of the indicators the World Bank uses and then we look at the Millennium Development Goals. Where appropriate we will also look at other sources of data.

The purpose of this post isn’t to assess the validity of the different indicators, just to provide an overview of HOW MUCH data there is out there!

Indicators of Education and Development

The World Bank uses several indicators to measure how developed a country is in terms of education:

The net enrolment rate for pre-primary
The net enrolment rate for primary*
The net enrolment rate for secondary education

The gross enrolment ratio for tertiary (further) education.
Gender parity for primary education (using the gross enrolment ratio)**
primary completion rate for both sexes

The total number of primary aged children who are out of school.
Government expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP.
The World Bank also monitors the quality of education systems and finance focussing indicators such as how effectively students are monitored and quality of decision making.

*The net enrolment rate for primary is ‘the number of pupils of official primary school age (according to ISCED97) who are enrolled in primary education as a percentage of the total children of the official school age population’.

**The gross enrolment rate for primary school The number of children enrolled in primary school (of any age) as a percentage of the total children of the official school age population.

The difference between Net Enrolment Rate and Gross Enrolment Rate is explained succinctly in this blog post on NER, GER and Universal Primary Education.

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals has ten targets for education development (with a heavy focus on gender equity and also ensuring all students are taught about sustainable development) and twelve main indicators to measure these targets including:

Flows of official development aid for scholarships
The proportion of teachers with qualifications.

The proportion of schools providing safe facilities.

Indicators of Health and Development

The United Nations has 13 targets and 28 indicators for health and development including

maternal mortality ratio

proportion of live births attended by a health professional
under five mortality rate
Neo natal mortality rate

number of new HIV infections per 1000
Tuberculosis, malaria and Hepatitis B rates per 1000
Deaths from diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes

Suicide rates
treatments for drug addiction
alcohol consumption

deaths from road traffic injuries
adolescent birth rates
effective access to family planning

death rates from air pollution and poor hygiene.
Smoking rates
proportion of populations vaccinated and with access to vaccinations

Health worker density and distribution
Health emergency preparedness.

Other social indicators to be covered in a future post…..

Later on I will also cover the following:

Health

Employment Rates
Gender equality
Peacefulness

Democracy
Corruption
Consumption

Leisure/ Media
Civil Rights
Crime/ social unrest

Suicide Rates
Composite indicators of all of the above!!!

I might also cover some of the more subjective indicators of development:

Life satisfaction (‘happiness’ indicators)
Trust
confidence

well-being
perceived security

Signposting and related posts

This material is mainly relevant to the Global Development and Globalisation module, taught as part of the AQA’s A-level sociology specification.

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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by 189 nations during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. Eight MDGs were developed which responded to the world’s main development challenges.

millennium-development-goals

The goals ranged from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions.

They have so far galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest. The UN is also working with governments, civil society and other partners to build on the momentum generated by the MDGs and carry on with an ambitious post-2015 development agenda.

The MDGs aimed to measure development in eight categories, using 60 separate indicators. The final two goals were aimed more at developed countries, aiming to monitor things such as carbon dioxide emissions, development aid donations and fair trade rules.

Following the success of the eight MDGs, they have since ‘developed’ into seventeen global goals for sustainable development

The Global Goals for Sustainable Development

Sustainable Development Goals.jpg

The Millennium Development Goals – Progress to 2015 (selected)

The infographics below provide the headlines….

mdgs_infographics_english-mdg1

MDG7 drinking water.jpg

And some further MDG achievements….

The proportion of undernourished people in developed regions halved between 1990 and 2015.
In 1990, nearly half of the population in the developing regions lived on less than $1.25 a day. This rate dropped to 14 per cent in 2015.
The average proportion of women in parliament has doubled

The net loss of forests has reduced from an average of 8.3 million hectares annually in the 1990s to an average of 5.2 million hectares annually between 2000 and 2010.

Remaining Development Goals (selected)

At the global level more than 800 million people are still living in extreme poverty

Globally, an estimated 795 people are malnourished
Globally, 300 million workers lived below the $1.25 a day poverty line in 2015.
The proportion of the working-age population that is employed – has fallen from 62 per cent in 1991 to 60 per cent in 2015.

In countries affected by conflict, the proportion of out-of-school children increased from 30 per cent in 1999 to 36 per cent in 2012.
Globally, about three quarters of working-age men participate in the labour force, compared to half of working-age women.
Women continue to experience significant gaps in terms of poverty, labour market and wages, as well as participation in private and public decision-making

Between 1990 and 2012, global emissions of carbon dioxide increased by over 50 per cent.

The map below shows the regions where most and least progress was made over the 15 years of the Millennium Development Goals.

mdgmap-620x3991 — Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region where the most progress is to be made.

Some strengths of the MDGs as indicators of development

Much broader range of indicators (60) – more validity! – Good for professional development workers!
Includes the developed nations (these also have targets – 7 and 8 especially)

NB – These have now become the ‘sustainable development goals’.

Some limitations of the MDGs as indicators of development

Not very ambitious – halving poverty by 2015, given up on the idea of ‘economic growth’.
Problems with some indicators – e.g. ‘finishing primary school’ doesn’t tell us about quality of education or how many days actually spent in school.