United Nations High-Level Panel on the future of the MDGs had rejected the idea of a goal to address income inequality, it has embraced the debate about inequality - pushing for zero-based targets for some goals and routine disaggregation of data to measure progress. As ODI's Claire Melamed put it neatly at the time, the inequality campaigners had lost the battle but won the war.
The proposed (not agreed) zero-based targets cover a range of issues - preventable mortality, primary enrolment, basic literacy and numeracy, absolute poverty, hunger, water, sanitation, and other domains. What the High-Level Panel has called 'global minimum standards', the NGOs have called 'getting to zero' - and right on cue, Save the Children has issued a report which seeks to articulate what 'getting to zero' might mean.
Save the Children sets out to define what zero-based goals might mean and then test what it would take to achieve these commitments. In defining what a zero goal might be, the report highlights in stark terms why we ought to care: a reduction of child mortality down to a level of 20 per 1,000 live births (2%) would mean saving 1.8 million children's lives a year. UNICEF argues a similar case.
Save the Children models of a number of different scenarios to test what might be required to achieve the zero goals. The scenarios described are: business as usual (i.e. projecting current trends of income inequality and growth), tackling income inequality (i.e. reducing inequality levels), and addressing inequality and governance (better governance indicators and spending commitments to particular areas). The report compares a series of (mostly) zero goals against these scenarios to test whether the world can achieve getting to zero by 2030. The basic point is that business as usual wonât cut it. The report is worth reading for itself, but also to highlight some of the opportunities and challenges in not leaving any one behind.
First, Save the Children lay down a marker about several of the elements they see as important for children âunderlying economic structures and high inequality, and the effectiveness of governance and public spending for children(particularly on public he
Second, they define and build scenarios for how achievable goals on under-5 mortality, stunting, access to improved water and sanitation, and all children reaching the last grade of primary school would be. They aren't able to model the full list of potential zero-based goals suggested in the HLP report (annex 1). This shows that there are data and analytic challenges in the 'no one left behind' agenda (e.g. not only being in school but achieving measurable learning outcomes, violence against girls and women, and others). But that a goal isn't (yet) measured isnât necessarily a deal breaker â not all that matters has been measured and it is important that the post-MDG agenda starts from the basis of a human development goal. But this does highlight the challenges trying to work out exactly what the wider set of zero goals might mean in practice.
Third, specific mention is made of stunting (an indicator of long-term malnutrition). There is lots of evidence of the damage associated with stunting including on children's self-efficacy and aspirations and their cognitive development, but this isn't likely to become a zero goal in the post-2015 framework. Save the Children suggests that the goal should be a 50% reduction from 2010 levels. This non-zero aim is (perhaps) understandable in pragmatic policy terms - tackling stunting requires a range of measures that are difficult to implement. But bear in mind that much of the damage that causes stunting is probably done early in children's lives and so, by extension if children's early conditions were improved it ought to be possible to improve this indicator relatively quickly for younger children.
Fourth, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative has done much to demonstrate why a wider sense of the living standards or circumstances experienced by poor people is important to understanding the impact of poverty. Young Lives model of what is likely to matter for children's development makes the same point. Poverty is both multi-dimensional (money and wider indicators) and needs to be understood within the context it occurs (i.e. inequality within a country matters). A lack of money is central to the experience of poverty but the dollar a day measure has outlived its usefulness in a world where inequality is recognised as a core concern of human development.
The idea of global minimum standards envisaged by the HLP provides an important step forward. Perhaps this also helps deal with one of the challenges of developing shared goals in a multi-polar world - recognising there are basic standards all societies should aim for and - if necessary -be supported towards achieving, while balancing this with the need for some differentiation in frameworks to recognise progress in nations which come from very different circumstances and starting points. The obvious question this prompts is how much we know about the type of policies which can help deliver the zero-based agenda â that question, of who experiences marginalisation and how policy can help reduce this, is a question to which we will return.
United Nations High-Level Panel on the future of the MDGs had rejected the idea of a goal to address income inequality, it has embraced the debate about inequality - pushing for zero-based targets for some goals and routine disaggregation of data to measure progress. As ODI's Claire Melamed put it neatly at the time, the inequality campaigners had lost the battle but won the war.
The proposed (not agreed) zero-based targets cover a range of issues - preventable mortality, primary enrolment, basic literacy and numeracy, absolute poverty, hunger, water, sanitation, and other domains. What the High-Level Panel has called 'global minimum standards', the NGOs have called 'getting to zero' - and right on cue, Save the Children has issued a report which seeks to articulate what 'getting to zero' might mean.
Save the Children sets out to define what zero-based goals might mean and then test what it would take to achieve these commitments. In defining what a zero goal might be, the report highlights in stark terms why we ought to care: a reduction of child mortality down to a level of 20 per 1,000 live births (2%) would mean saving 1.8 million children's lives a year. UNICEF argues a similar case.
Save the Children models of a number of different scenarios to test what might be required to achieve the zero goals. The scenarios described are: business as usual (i.e. projecting current trends of income inequality and growth), tackling income inequality (i.e. reducing inequality levels), and addressing inequality and governance (better governance indicators and spending commitments to particular areas). The report compares a series of (mostly) zero goals against these scenarios to test whether the world can achieve getting to zero by 2030. The basic point is that business as usual wonât cut it. The report is worth reading for itself, but also to highlight some of the opportunities and challenges in not leaving any one behind.
First, Save the Children lay down a marker about several of the elements they see as important for children âunderlying economic structures and high inequality, and the effectiveness of governance and public spending for children(particularly on public he
Second, they define and build scenarios for how achievable goals on under-5 mortality, stunting, access to improved water and sanitation, and all children reaching the last grade of primary school would be. They aren't able to model the full list of potential zero-based goals suggested in the HLP report (annex 1). This shows that there are data and analytic challenges in the 'no one left behind' agenda (e.g. not only being in school but achieving measurable learning outcomes, violence against girls and women, and others). But that a goal isn't (yet) measured isnât necessarily a deal breaker â not all that matters has been measured and it is important that the post-MDG agenda starts from the basis of a human development goal. But this does highlight the challenges trying to work out exactly what the wider set of zero goals might mean in practice.
Third, specific mention is made of stunting (an indicator of long-term malnutrition). There is lots of evidence of the damage associated with stunting including on children's self-efficacy and aspirations and their cognitive development, but this isn't likely to become a zero goal in the post-2015 framework. Save the Children suggests that the goal should be a 50% reduction from 2010 levels. This non-zero aim is (perhaps) understandable in pragmatic policy terms - tackling stunting requires a range of measures that are difficult to implement. But bear in mind that much of the damage that causes stunting is probably done early in children's lives and so, by extension if children's early conditions were improved it ought to be possible to improve this indicator relatively quickly for younger children.
Fourth, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative has done much to demonstrate why a wider sense of the living standards or circumstances experienced by poor people is important to understanding the impact of poverty. Young Lives model of what is likely to matter for children's development makes the same point. Poverty is both multi-dimensional (money and wider indicators) and needs to be understood within the context it occurs (i.e. inequality within a country matters). A lack of money is central to the experience of poverty but the dollar a day measure has outlived its usefulness in a world where inequality is recognised as a core concern of human development.
The idea of global minimum standards envisaged by the HLP provides an important step forward. Perhaps this also helps deal with one of the challenges of developing shared goals in a multi-polar world - recognising there are basic standards all societies should aim for and - if necessary -be supported towards achieving, while balancing this with the need for some differentiation in frameworks to recognise progress in nations which come from very different circumstances and starting points. The obvious question this prompts is how much we know about the type of policies which can help deliver the zero-based agenda â that question, of who experiences marginalisation and how policy can help reduce this, is a question to which we will return.