Are Millennium Goals of Poverty Reduction Useful?

Millennium goals aim to halve poverty in developing countries by 2015. As a distinction is not drawn between the persistently and transiently poor, there is a risk that strategies designed to accelerate growth to achieve the desired reduction in an overall index of poverty may be preferred to those that benefit the persistently poor. Besides, in the absence of a disaggregation of these goals into rural and urban components, rural poverty reduction may not get the priority it deserves. Finally, the feasibility of the millennium goals is not plausible. While the growth rates required for achieving these goals do not differ much from those recorded in recent years, their sustainability is not self-evident. Moreover, as income inequality has increased in recent years, the poverty reduction due to a given growth rate is lower. But these goals are nevertheless useful in drawing attention to pervasive deprivation in developing countries, and to the need for a determined and co-ordinated effort by the development community in reducing it substantially in the not-too-distant future.