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

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.