Update on Millenium Development Goals progress

With under 5 years to go until the deadline for the Millenium Development Goals to be met, there’s been a lot in the news about the UN’s recent get-together to discuss progress, and by far and away the best analysis I’ve read is this leader article from The Economist.

When looking at the MDG’s it’s clear that, on the whole, the results so far are fairly depressing. There’s still an awful long way to go before reaching most of the goals. However, from an economic development perspective we can consider a lot of factors relating to the positive and negative aspects of setting global targets, and this article from the Economist provides a lot of useful topics for discussion in lessons. It also offers some data to aid in those discussions. Personally, I use the MDG’s as a great introduction to development economics, and I’ll certainly be using this article in my lessons.