Are poverty and social goals for the 21st century attainable?

摘要

In the past few decades there have been astoriishing social gains for some poor groups in the world; but much weaker gains and even retrogression for others. Consider the following: In East Asia the numbers of people in poverty fell by half between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, and the proportion living on less than a dollar a day (at 1985 Purchasing Power Parity [PPP] exchange rates) fell from six out of ten to two out of ten people. In sub-Saharan Africa, there is simply not enough information to make even an empirically based statement along the same lines, but there is a high probability that both the proportion and the absolute numbers in poverty increased in this period. More recently, in all regions outside East Asia, the numbers of poor increased between 1987 and 1993. Infant mortality in 1970 was about the same - at 140 per thousand live births - in the three high-mortality regions of the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, but by 1995 had fallen, at very different rates, respectively to 54, 75 and 92 in these three regions. Almost everywhere primary and secondary school enrolment rates have steadily risen, even in periods of stagnation and decline. Sub-Saharan Africa is the exception, with the gross primary enrolment rate actually falling from 80% in 1980 to 72% in 1993.