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Goal: Eradicate extreme poverty
and hunger
Targets by 2015:
Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.
Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
Reducing poverty starts with children.
More than 30 per cent of children in developing countries – about 600 million
– live on less than US $1 a day.
Every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under
the age of 5.
Poverty hits children hardest. While a severe lack of goods and services
hurts every human, it is most threatening to children’s rights: survival,
health and nutrition, education, participation, and protection from harm and
exploitation. It creates an environment that is damaging to children’s
development in every way – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.
One than 1 billion children are severely deprived of at least one of the
essential goods and services they require to survive, grow and develop.
Some regions of the world have more dire situations than others, but even
within one country there can be broad disparities – between city and rural
children, for example, or between boys and girls. An influx or tourism in one
area may improve a country’s poverty statistics overall, while the majority
remains poor and disenfranchised.
Each deprivation heightens the effect of the others. So when two or more
coincide, the effects on children can be catastrophic. For example, women
who must walk long distances to fetch household water may not be able to
fully attend to their children, which may affect their health and development.
And children who themselves must walk long distances to fetch water have
less time to attend school – a problem that particularly affects girls. Children
who are not immunized or who are malnourished are much more susceptible
to the diseases that are spread through poor sanitation. Poverty exacerbates
the effects of HIV/AIDS and armed conflict. It entrenches social, economic
and gender disparities and undermines protective family environments.
Poverty contributes to malnutrition, which in turn is a contributing factor in
over half of the under-five deaths in developing countries. Some 300 million
children go to bed hungry every day. Of these only eight per cent are victims
of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 per cent are suffering
long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.
The best start in life is critical in a child’s first few years, not only to survival
but to her or his physical, intellectual and emotional development. So these
deprivations greatly hamper children’s ability to achieve their full potential,
contributing to a society’s cycle of endless poverty and hunger.
See map: Childhood is under threat from poverty
Fulfilling children’s rights breaks that cycle. Providing them with basic
education, health care, nutrition and protection produces results of many
times greater magnitude than these cost-effective interventions. Their
chances of survival and of a productive future are greatly increased – as are
the chances of a truly fair and peaceful global society.
UNICEF responds by:
Building national capacities for primary health care. Around 270 million
children, just over 14 per cent of all children in developing countries, have
no access to health care services. Yet improving the health of children is one
responsibility among many in the fight against poverty. Healthy children
become healthy adults: people who create better lives for themselves, their
communities and their countries. Working in this area also helps to further
Goal 4 – to improve child survival rates.
Helping the world's children survive and flourish is a core UNICEF activity,
and immunization is central to that. A global leader in vaccine supply,
UNICEF purchases and helps distribute vaccines to over 40 per cent of
children in developing countries. Immunization programs usually include
other cost-effective health initiatives, like micronutrient supplementation to
fight disabling malnutrition and insecticide-treated bed nets to fight malaria.
Along with governments and non-governmental organizations at national
and community levels, UNICEF works to strengthen local health systems and
improve at-home care for children, including oral re-hydration to save the
lives of infants with severe diarrhoea and promoting and protecting
breastfeeding.
Getting girls to school. Some 13 per cent of children ages 7 to 18 years in
developing countries have never attended school. This rate is 32 per cent
among girls in sub-Saharan Africa (27 per cent of boys) and 33 per cent of
rural children in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet an education is
perhaps a child’s strongest barrier against poverty, especially for girls.
Educated girls are likely to marry later and have healthier children. They are
more productive at home and better paid in the workplace, better able to
protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and more able to participate in
decision-making at all levels. Additionally, this UNICEF activity furthers Goals
2 and 3: universal primary education and gender equality.
To that end, UNICEF works in 158 countries, calling on development
agencies, governments, donors and communities to step up efforts on behalf
of education for all children, and then coordinating those efforts.
Programmes differ from country to country according to needs and cultures,
but may include help with funding, logistics, information technology, school
water and sanitation, and a child- and gender-friendly curriculum.
Supporting good nutrition. UNICEF seeks to help stem the worst effects
of malnutrition by funding and helping countries supply micronutrients like
iron and vitamin A, which is essential for a healthy immune system, during
vaccination campaigns or through fortified food. UNICEF, governments, salt
producers and private sector organizations are also working to eliminate
iodine deficiency, the biggest primary cause of preventable mental
retardation and brain damage, through the Universal Salt Iodization (USI)
education campaign. UNICEF also works through communities to talk with
child caregivers about how to provide sound nutrition for children,
particularly via breastfeeding.
In emergency situations, UNICEF assesses the nutritional and health needs
of affected people, protects and supports breastfeeding by providing safe
havens for pregnant and lactating women, provides essential micronutrients,
supports therapeutic feeding centres for severely malnourished children, and
provides food for orphans.
Assisting in water and sanitation improvement. One in three children in
the developing world – more than 500 million children – has no access at all
to sanitation facilities. And some 400 million children, one in five, have no
access to safe water. Meanwhile, unsafe water and sanitation cause about
4,000 child deaths per day. Through advocacy, funding and technical
assistance, UNICEF works in more than 90 countries around the world to
improve water supplies and sanitation facilities in schools and communities
and to improve and promote safe hygiene practices.
In emergencies UNCIEF provides safe water, and helps displaced
communities replace or find new water resources and build latrines.
Increasingly, UNICEF emphasizes preventive programs that strengthen the
capacity of governments and partners to prepare for these worst case
situations.
Creating a protective child environment. Conflicts are most frequent in
poor countries, especially in those that are ill governed and where there are
sharp inequalities between ethnic or religious groups. An environment of
unrest heightens the risk of abduction, sexual violence and exploitation of
children, as well as the struggle for shelter, education and survival.
Toward fulfilling a central goal of the Millennium Declaration, protection of
the vulnerable, UNICEF advocates for awareness and monitoring of these
issues, and for tougher laws for child exploiters. Working with individuals,
civic groups, governments and the private sector in the field, UNICEF helps
establish and strengthen local safety nets for children, like community child-
care centers, schools, and basic social services.
Advocating, raising awareness and helping effect policies for
children’s well-being. Lastly, UNICEF complements these on-the-field
activities with policy advocacy at every level of government. Spreading
awareness and offering technical assistance, UNICEF aids countries in
forming and effecting programs that help ensure children’s rights to survive
and thrive.
These include working with governments on developing broad national
planning frameworks like Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and
Sector-wide Approaches to Programming(SWAPs), which help countries and
donors identify needs and form a results-based plan for change.
These policies and programmes don’t take shape in a void. Along with
national committees, other UN agencies and international private groups,
UNICEF helps countries carry out assessment research to define and
measure child poverty, and then helps put a system in place to monitor
results.
Progress
Some countries have made progress meeting this Goal, but success is
mixed. India and China are on track to meet the income target at least, but
in a classic example of national disparities, some 221 million people in India
and 142 million in China are still chronically or acutely malnourished.
More than half of undernourished people, 60 per cent, are found in Asia and
the Pacific. Thirty per cent of infants born in South Asia in 2003 were
underweight, the highest percentage in the world.
Most sub-Saharan African countries will likely miss both targets. The region
has 204 million hungry and is the only region of the world where hunger is
increasing. More than 40 per cent of Africans can not even get sufficient food
on a day-to-day basis.
Recent gains in millennium development goal 1 have seen the number of hungry
people in the world decrease to fewer than 1 billion, though the Food and Agriculture
Organisation of the United Nations believes that this number is still unacceptably
high.

Millennium Development Goal 1 has three targets:

1. To halve the proportion of people whose daily income is less than $1.25
2. To achieve full and productive employment, as well as decent work for all,
including young people and women
3. To halve the proportion of individuals suffering from hunger in the period
between 1990 and 2015.

Millennium Development Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme

Poverty and Hunger. CLICK TO TWEET

Pioneering efforts have led to profound achievements including:

 A considerable reduction in extreme poverty over the last 25 years. In 1990,

nearly 50 percent of the population in developing nations lived on less than
$1.25 a day. As of 2015, that proportion has dropped to 14 percent.
 The number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide has reduced by
more than 50 percent. In 1990, 1.9 billion people were said to be living in
extreme poverty, compared to 836 million in 2015. Most progress was seen in
the new millennium.
 The number of living on more than $4 a day – those in the working middle
class – has nearly tripled between 1991 and 2015. In 1991, this group made
only 18 percent of the population, and rose to 50 percent in 2015.
 The proportion of undernourished people in the developing world has dropped
by almost 50 percent since 1990; from 23.3 percent in 1990 – ’92 to 12.9
percent in 2014 – ’16.

A closer look at the achievements of Millennium Development Goal 1 targets

Target #1: Extreme poverty reduction

The poverty rate in the developing world has plummeted from 47 percent to 14
percent in the period between 1990 and 2015 – a 70 percent drop!
The MDG target of reducing by half extreme global poverty was achieved by 2010 –
5 years before the 2015 deadline. Recent estimates show that the number of people
surviving on less than $1.25 a day worldwide reduced from 36 percent to 15 percent
between 1990 and 2011. As of 2015, the proportion has dropped further to 12 percent.
By 2011, all developing regions, with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, had achieved
the target of halving the number of people living in extreme poverty. The most populous
countries in the world – China and India – played a major role in the worldwide reduction
of poverty. The remarkable progress in China led to reduction in extreme poverty in
Eastern Asia from 61 percent to 4 percent between 1990 and 2015. Southern Asia’s
progress has also been impressive, with a decline from 52 to 17 percent within the same
time period, but with accelerated reduction since 2008.
In contrast, the rate of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa did not change between 1990
and 2002. The rate of poverty decline has accelerated since, though more than 40
percent of sub-Saharan population continues to live extreme poverty in 2015. Worse
still, extreme poverty in Western Asia was expected to increase between 2011 and
2015.

Target #2: Achieving full and productive employment

There has been mixed changes with regard to these changes as follows:

1. The global economy is in a new era characterised by slower growth, greater

inequalities, and turbulence, plus employment opportunities are not growing as
fast as the increasing labour force. The employment-to-population ratio in the
word, or the number of working-age people in employment, has dropped from
62 percent to 60 percent between 1991 and 2015, with a considerable downturn
during the 2008/09 global crisis. In fact, the International Labour Organisation
claims that there are more than 204 million unemployed people in 205, which is
34 million before the start of the 2008 economic crisis and 53 million more
than in 1991.
2. Employment opportunities have diminished in both developed and developing
regions. The employment-to-population ratio in developed nations has fallen by
1 percent, while that in developing regions has reduced by 1 percent, with the
largest declines in Eastern and Southern Asia. The employment situation in
sub-Saharan Africa has improved slightly, though the livelihoods of residents
have not improved much due to high under-employment and informal
employments, combined with low labour productivity.
3. Youth, especially young women are still disproportionately affected by
unemployment and few employment opportunities. Only 4 in 10 youth (men
and women aged 15-24) are employed in 2015 compared to 5 in 10 in 1991,
indicating a 10 percent drop in employment. While this is partly due to staying
 longer in school, 74 million youth are looking for jobs in 2015 globally – three
times higher than the adult number.
4. The number of employees living in extreme poverty has reduced significantly
over the past 25 years, despite the global financial crisis. In 1991, nearly 50
percent of workers in developing nations survived on a household income of
less than $1.25 per person per day. In 2015, the rate has dropped to 11 percent,
which translated to a two-thirds decline in the number of extremely poor
workers, from 900 million to 300 million between 1991 and 2015.
5. The number of people living on more than $4 a day (working middle class) has
nearly tripled between 1991 and 2015, making up almost 50 percent of the
workforce in developing countries – up from 18 percent in 1991.

Target #3: Halve the proportion of people suffering from hunger

Current estimates suggest that nearly 780 million people living in the developing
regions are undernourished, which means that one in nine people do not have enough
to eat. However, this translated to a 50 percent drop in the proportion of
undernourished people in developing countries – from 23.3 to 12.9 percent between
1990-92 and 2014-16.
Final note
Progress in hunger reduction has been significant despite the challenging global
environment over the last decade. Major challenges have included rising
unemployment, higher food and energy prices, volatile commodity prices, economic
recessions, frequent extreme weather events and natural disasters, and political
instability and civil strife. These obstacles have slowed down progress in reducing
extreme poverty and hunger in some of the most vulnerable nations of the world.
Even though the MDG targets have been met, it will be extremely difficult to
eliminate the remaining extreme poverty and hunger.
Were the Millennium Development Goals a success? Yes! Sort of
The United Nations has hailed the Millennium Development Goals – or MDGs – as “the most
successful anti-poverty movement in history.” So have the goals and targets ushered into life 15
years ago achieved their objectives?

“The MDGs helped to lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty, to make inroads
against hunger, to enable more girls to attend school than ever before and to protect our planet,”
the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon recently explained.

But he didn’t finish there. “Yet for all the remarkable gains, I am keenly aware that inequalities
persist and that progress has been uneven.”

It’s true remarkable progress has been accomplished. Yet, around 1.5 billion people in conflict
affected countries and on the extreme margins of society were unreached by the goals and unable
to benefit from the tide that lifted their neighbours.

So which goals were met and which fell short? Below, we’ll broadly examine what has
been achieved for the main targets within the eight goals using information from The Millennium
Development Goals Report 2015.

MDG 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger

The target of reducing extreme poverty rates – people living on just $1.25 a day – by half was
met five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. Globally the number of people living in extreme
poverty has fallen from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015.

However, target of halving the proportion of people suffering from hunger has narrowly been
missed. The proportion of undernourished people in the developing regions has fallen from 23.3
per cent in 1990 to 12.9 per cent in 2014.

MDG 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education

Primary school enrolment figures have shown an impressive rise, but the goal of achieving
universal primary education has just been missed. The primary school enrolment rate in
developing regions reached 91 per cent this year, up from 83 per cent in 2000.

MDG 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

About two two-thirds of developing countries achieved gender parity in primary education.
Progress has been particularly strong in Southern Asia. Only 74 girls were enrolled in primary
school for every 100 boys in 1990. Today, 103 girls are enrolled for every 100 boys.

MDG 4: Reduce Child Mortality

The global under-five mortality rate has declined by more than half since 1990 – dropping from
90 to 43 deaths per 1,000 live births. This falls short of the targeted drop of two-thirds.
In practical terms this means 16,000 children under-five continue to die every day from
preventable causes. A terrible reality made worse by the fact we know what each one of these
major killers are, and what can be done to thwart them.

MDG 5: Improve Maternal Health

Since 1990, the maternal mortality ratio has been cut nearly in half. This is an impressive result,
but as well with goal 4 it falls short of the two-thirds reduction that was aimed for. There were an
estimated 289,000 maternal deaths in 2013.

MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases

The results with MDG 5 are mixed. The target of halting and beginning to reverse the spread of
HIV/Aids has not been met – although the number of new HIV infections fell by 40% between
2000 and 2013.

According to the UN, over 6.2 million malaria deaths have been averted between 2000 and 2015,
primarily of children under five years of age in sub-Saharan Africa. The global malaria incidence
rate has fallen by an estimated 37 per cent and the mortality rate by 58 per cent

MDG 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainably

Between 1990 and 2015, 2.6 billion people gained access to improved drinking water, meaning
the target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water was achieved.
Worldwide, 2.1 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation.

MDG 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Official development assistance from wealthy countries to developing countries increased by 66

per cent in real terms between 2000 and 2014, reaching $135.2 billion.

What comes next?

The MDG’s successor – the Sustainable Development Goals – are due to be adopted by world
leaders at a summit in New York in late September.

All countries – as well as aid agencies, businesses and the public working in collaborative
partnership – will implement this universal agenda for a transformed world. And the first order
of business will be “reaching the furthest behind first.”

For World Vision this means reaching vulnerable children in the world’s hardest places to live.
They are the children in remote areas, in the midst of intractable conflicts and buffeted by
droughts or flooding caused by the effects of climate change.

World Vision believes sustainable development begins with healthy, nourished and well-
educated children free from all forms of violence – and the SDGs represent an unprecedented
opportunity to make these aspirations a reality. The real work now lies ahead: ensuring these new
commitments to transform the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children are kept.