Economic Growth and Development

physical attributes such as height, weight, or upper-arm circumference. These
latter measures have highlighted a particular concern with nutrition driven by
an apparent paradox in South Asia.
One of the MDGs is to halve the number of underweight children. A partic-
ular puzzle is that India has a high proportion of children with low weight for
age and low height for age compared with other developing countries and rela-
tive to anthropometric ideals. Despite rapid economic growth and falling
poverty these figures have changed little. Tables 1.4 and 1.5 use two measures
of malnutrition,low height for age and low weight for age for a number of poor
developing countries from Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. On both indicators
malnutrition in India remains high and stagnant between the mid-1990s and
mid-2000s. Countries such as Bangladesh that experienced much higher levels
of both in the 1990s showed sharp improvement in the 2000s to levels below
India. Those countries that had comparable levels of malnutrition to India,
measured by height for age, by the mid-2000s, such as Malawi, Zambia,

34 Sources of Growth in the Modern World Economy since 1950

Box 1.2 The Millennium Development Goals

The MDGs originated from a series of UN resolutions and agreements made at

world conferences in 2000. The MDGs have provided a framework for the

World Bank and other donors to target aid and technical assistance towards

achieving them and for recipient countries to measure general progress and

request aid according to whether they are being fulfilled. The MDGs are:

(a) Reducing the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by half

between 1990 and 2015.

(b)Ensuring that all children are enrolled in primary school by 2015.

(c) Reducing gender inequality through eliminating the gender gap in enrol-

ments in both primary and secondary school by 2005.

(d)Reducing infant and child mortality by two-thirds during 1990–2015.

(e) Reducing maternal mortality rates by three-quarters during 1990–2015.

(f) Ensuring that all women have access to reproductive health services by 2015.

(g) Reversing loss of environmental resources through implementing sustain-

able development strategies.

In the early 2000s progress towards achieving the MDGs was poor. Of 24 Sub-

Saharan African countries only in Ghana and Madagascar were poverty rates

declining at a pace sufficient to reach the relevant MDG. Only Kenya and

Cameroon were likely to realize the goal of universal primary enrolment by

2015. In Zambia,Madagascar and Zimbabwe there were actually significant
      declines in primary enrolment. Only urban Burkina Faso, Tanzania and
      Zimbabwe and rural Madagascar and Tanzania were on target to meet the goal
      of gender equality in primary and secondary education. In only eleven of 24
      countries was the improvement sufficient to realize the goal of reducing the
      infant mortality rate by two-thirds by 2015 (Sahn and Stifel, 2003).