Measuring and Monitoring the Achievements of the Millennium Development Goals Through Dynamic Composite Indices

The fight for development and the eradication of poverty, following the decisive shift from a unidimensional perspective grounded in a simplistic monetary approach to a multidimensional conception of the phenomena based on a multidisciplinary people-centred approach, has led to the elaboration in the year 2000 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This set of targets—agreed globally to promote human development and respond to the needs of the world’s poor—is reaching its established deadline, leaving the international community with the necessity to effectively evaluate MDG achievements and address the challenges posed by the post-2015 agenda. Contrarily to the usual practice that has so far measured such achievements goal by goal, these should be analysed as a whole to provide the picture needed, exhaustive of the level of attainment of all the MDGs. In this work, two non-compensatory dynamic composite indices, the adjusted Mazziotta–Pareto Index (ranking performances) and the Jevons index (measuring speed in time) are used to measure and monitor world regions’ performance in fulfilling the MDG objectives since their establishment. As the time available for countries to reach the targets is getting close, the findings are sought to feed the ongoing conclusions and international discourse on the effectiveness of the MDG initiative and degree of results obtained. The conclusive part explains how they could also help identifying the issues that were instrumental to both successes and failures in the implementation of the MDG framework in each sphere, from which to extrapolate potential policy indications to contribute to the post-2015 agenda.