Will South Asia Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030? Learning from the MDGs Experience
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Will South Asia Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030? Learning from the MDGs Experience M. Niaz Asadullah1 · Antonio Savoia2 · Kunal Sen3 Accepted: 27 June 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper contributes to the debate on the Sustainable Development Goals progress by evaluating the MDGs achievements in South Asia and the policy and institutional challenges deriving from such experience. Using cross-country regressions and aggregate indicators of poverty, health, education and gender parity outcomes, we offer three sets of findings. First, comparative evidence shows that, while South Asia has converged with richer regions, there is still significant variation in gender equality, universal primary education, and income poverty achievements across countries. Second, projections based on past trends on where SDGs are expected to be by 2030 reveal that there is a long way to go, where emblematic targets as income poverty eradication may not be met in the populous South Asian countries. Finally, considering the expanded set of development targets in the SDGs and the growth slowdown in South Asia, we argue that further progress would simultaneously require increased public spending on health and education and reforms improving state capacity. A simulation exercise confirms that such a combination of interventions would deliver significant benefits in the region, particularly in areas that are critical to progress on the goals of ‘No Poverty’, ‘Quality Education’, ‘Gender Equality’, and ‘Inclusive Growth’. Keywords South Asia · Poverty indicators · Development indicators · Public expenditure · State capacity · Quality of governance · Sustainable development goals · Millennium development goals JEL Classification D73 · O17 * Antonio Savoia [email protected] M. Niaz Asadullah [email protected] Kunal Sen [email protected] 1
Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2
Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
3
UNU-WIDER, Katajanokanlaituri 6 B, 00160 Helsinki, Finland
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1 Introduction South Asian countries have in large part significantly improved their human development status in the last two decades. Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka have met most of the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) targets in the areas of poverty alleviation, food security, primary school enrolment, gender parity in primary and secondary level education, infant and under-five mortality ratio and immunisation coverage (Mahmud et al. 2013; Asadullah et al. 2014; United Nations 2015). At the same time, populous countries in South Asia such as India and Pakistan have not able to achieve MDG targets in Goal 1 on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, Goal 4 on reducing child mortality and Goal 5 on improving maternal health.1 Perhaps reflecting this mixed record in human development outcomes, countries in the re
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