The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were heralded as opening a new chapter in international development, and have led to the use of global goals and target-setting as a central instrument defining the international development agenda. Despite this increased importance, little is understood about how they influence policy priorities of key stakeholders, and their broader consequences. While quantification is the key strength of global goals, it also involves simplification, reification and abstraction, which have far-reaching implications for redefining priorities. This paper highlights the key findings and conclusions of the Power of Numbers Project, which undertook 11 case studies of the effects of selected MDG goals/targets, including both the empirical effects on policy priorities and normative effects on development discourses, and drew specifically on human rights principles and human development priorities. While the Project found that the effects varied considerably from one goal/target to another, all led to unintended consequences in diverting attention from other important objectives and reshaping development thinking. Many of the indicators were poorly selected and contributed to distorting effects. The Project concludes that target-setting is a valuable but a limited and blunt tool, and that the methodology for target-setting should be refined to include policy responsiveness in addition to data availability criteria.

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Rights and PermissionsAll rights reserved.The text and data in this publication may be reproduced as long as the source is cited. Reproductions for commercial purposes are forbidden. International ABSTRACTThis paper questions the methodology that is widely used to assess progress in implementing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a methodology that asks whether the targets are likely to be met. This approach is inappropriate, since the MDGs were neither designed as nor intended to be planning targets. They were political commitments, made by world leaders, that define priorities in a normative framework and that can be used as benchmarks in evaluating progress. In this framework the appropriate question is whether more is being done to live up to that commitment, resulting in faster progress. We present a methodology and analysis using this new framework, and find that our assessment of "progress" differs considerably from that arising from the conventional methodology. For example, while access to safe water is touted as an MDG success, only a third of the countries improved at a faster rate. Overall, in most indicators and in most countries, progress has not accelerated.

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I apply the precariat class schema developed by Standing to the US workforce to illustrate an increased polarization between those who do and do not have quality jobs from 1980 to 2018. I use a decomposition of inequality to show that the precariat class structure explains a substantial and growing portion of income inequality. The precariat is typified by unstable, short-term, part-time, and benefit-free jobs. I find that that the precariat make up a large and growing share of the US workforce, while the “old” working class shrank precipitously. I also show that the demographics of the precariat and the old working class are substantially different in terms of race and gender.