Brookings Institute’s “Future Development”: Shame on me: Why it was wrong to cost the Millennium Development Goals
Shanta Devarajan, chief economist for the Middle East and North Africa region at the World Bank, discusses a paper he and colleagues wrote in 2002 estimating the costs of achieving the Millennium Development Goals. “…Discussions of financing needs enables policymakers to avoid these difficult reforms, while giving them an excuse for missing the goals (‘the money was not enough’). In short, by costing the Millennium Development Goals, I may have helped shift attention away from what is needed to reach the goals, and hence contributed to the perpetuation of poverty. Shame on me” (3/2).