Latin America and the Caribbean’s challenge to reach the MDGs: financing options and trade-offs

Leaders from all countries have agreed to pursue the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to reach them by 2015 with a view to securing a world with less poverty, hunger and disease, with better-educated children, more gender equality, greater survival prospects for infants and mothers, and a healthier environment. With less than ten years to the time horizon, the challenges ahead are still staggering, though there are some signs of progress. In most developing countries, providing every child with primary school education appears to be within our grasp. In the developing world as a whole, income poverty has been on the decline and there have been important gains in assisted child delivery and coverage of vaccination programmes, which have contributed to declining child and maternal mortality.1 Progress has been uneven, however. Most of the gains in declining income poverty have been concentrated in much of Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa tends to lag far behind for most of the MDG indicators. Child mortality has been on the decline globally, but again with the least relative progress in Africa. Disparities in progress are also vast within countries and many of the poorest tend to be left behind, particularly in rural areas.