opportunities for using these programmes more widely in the global
context of a recovery for all.
Social Protection and the importance of MDGs with Equity
A significant amount of MDG progress has been achieved in recent
years. However, the overall evidence suggests that improvements
have often not reached those who most need them. Figure 1 shows
how a country like Namibia has substantially reduced its under-five
mortality rate, from 72 per thousand deaths in 1992, to 42 in 2008;
however, disaggregating this reduction by income quintiles shows
that most of this progress is due to a reduction of under-five
mortality in the richer income groups. Many other countries that
have made overall progress show a similar pattern when national
data on child mortality are disaggregated (Garde 2010; Yablonski
and O’Donnell 2009).
Figure 1. MDGs and Inequality – Beware of National Averages
Namibia: Reduction of Under-five Mortality Rate 1992-2008
Source: Vandermoortele, J. (2010). Presentation on equity. UNICEF (June 2010).
It is widely recognized that pre-economic crisis progress on the
MDGs was uneven across and within countries. Much of the
progress in reducing income poverty has been concentrated in a few
countries–notably China and India–where pre-crisis growth patterns
also fuelled domestic inequalities. Across the developing world,