Leaving No One Behind under the Post-2015 Framework: Incentivizing equitable progress through data disaggregation and interim targets

There is a growing consensus that the new framework which will replace the Millennium Development Goals after 2015 should have equity at its heart and should ensure that ‘No One is Left Behind’. If this consensus is to be converted to commitments and then action, disaggregated data on development outcomes will have an important role to play in monitoring and target setting. This article focuses on further operationalizing a post-2015 monitoring system aimed to ensure that no social and economic group is left behind by development progress. It examines the level of disaggregation that is possible with current data sources and introduces newly disaggregated data to monitor progress in core dimensions such as health, nutrition, and access to water and sanitation for different social and economic groups. Using examples from this data, we clarify the kind of equitable progress that is desirable after 2015, and show how monitoring and target setting might proceed. This includes setting up ‘stepping stone’ equity targets for interim years between 2015 and 2030 to ensure that governments with short political and policy time horizons have a clear incentive to work on reducing inequalities promptly.