The relevance of population for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals

Bangladesh has been approaching to reach the targets for Millennium Development Goals by 2015, in particular, the indicators under education and health related goals. The indicators relating to family planning and fertility show on track in the recent past. The adolescent fertility rate has been reduced significantly, which leads annual population growth down to 1.3 percent with TFR 2.3. It is expected that the country will incessantly continue to improve the status of social indicators including population dynamics and health conditions, which will create congenial environment to meet the MDG targets.

Although the country will achieve the goals as a whole but the challenges hindered at the sub-national level where some pockets are there, in particular the riverine southern and northern areas, with low family planning use, high fertility, high MMR. It needs to pay attention in order to transmit the benefit of millennium goals uniformly in the country such as reduction of child mortality, reduction of adolescent fertility, maternal mortality etc. . Embedding holistic and compatible action plans in the population and health areas in the concerned regions would foster accelerated social development that might be narrowed down the regional disparities in reaching the sub-national level MDG targets to be achieved by 2015.

Bhumisuk Khananurak, Nucharee Srivirojana
ASEAN countries decided to issued a Joint Declaration on the Attainment of the MDGs to reduce gap among ASEAN countries and fulfill the ASEAN Economic Comminity which will occure in 2015. This study, therefore, intend to compare poverty eradication in ASEAN countries using Thailand as case study for reducing poverty problem. Data from household socio-economic survey provided by National Statistical Office and ASEAN Statistic provided by ASEAN Secretariate during 1990-2010 were employed to compare poverty situation in ASEAN countries using the national poverty line. The result revealed that Thailand rank the second in ASEAN countries after Malaysia in achieving poverty eradiation. Continuous decline in poverty was due to the economic recovery, government assistance on cost of living, social benefit programs. In order to counter poverty eradication and reduce income disparity in ASEAN countries, most of the ASEAN countries should cooperate and support in exhcanging information and technology, knowledge among each other to increase productivity. Moreover, central organization to manage resources in ASEAN countries should be set up to make ASEAN become one community to create equality, improve quality and sustainable growth in these areas.

Reduction in population’s tobacco consumption is one of the measures that can support the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. This study intends to explore how the population’s tobacco consumption can provoke or obstruct the achievement of Millennium Development Goals in Thailand. Existing secondary data from the national survey on Tobacco and Alcohol consumption by the National Statistical Office during 1991-2011and Health and Welfare Survey were employed. Descriptive statistics and bi-variate analysis were applied to describe trends of tobacco consumption among Thai population and its relationship with the achievement of each MDGs’ targets.
The results revealed that reduction in population’s tobacco consumption through application of tobacco control policies and strategies can partly provoke the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in Thailand especially in term of poverty reduction, achievement of universal primary education, promotion of gender equity and women empowerment, reduction of child mortality, improvement of maternal health, and development of a global partnership for development. However, it still hardly fulfills achievement of combating HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases and ensures environmental sustainability.

According to the latest reports submitted to the international community, Southern Cone countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay) have shown a noticeable decrease in the level of mortality in children under the age of 5, which grants them conditions to fulfill the goals to reduce child mortality set at their adhesion to the Millennium Summit (2000). Notwithstanding these predictions, said reports, in general, do not address in detail the problems of differences inside the countries and of preventable deaths, two issues which are essential to study to what extent the advances linked to development have enabled the joint realization of human rights. In order to give an answer to this, we refer to the information produced by the national vital statistics offices, and we apply several measures to this information which allow for estimation of differences between social, geographical and cultural sectors (and the temporal dynamics they describe). Likewise, we try to identify preventable deaths and their composition in order to determine the role of the population; so as to give continuity to the decreasing trend in the level of deaths occurring during the early years of life.

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by 2015 is one of the greatest challenges, faced by the developing countries including India, in present times. Also, there is a large disparity across and within the states and rural urban population in key demographic and socio-economic indicators. In this context, the aim of this paper is to examine the progress in achieving the millennium development goals related to poverty, education and health, in India and states. The paper utilized data from multiple sources- National Family and Health Surveys-II and III, Sample Registration System, Elementary education in India, District Information System for Education (DISE) 2009-10 and MDG India Country Report 2011. The percentage of poor below the poverty line is estimated at 26.7% by 2015, against the target of 23.9%. Net Enrolment Ratio (NER) is likely to achieve by 2015 but the quality of education is still questionable. The third and fourth goal that targets to reduce child and maternal mortality falls short of 10 percentage points in case of under 5 mortality and 30 percentage points in case of maternal mortality.

The latest official figures on mortality and morbidity attributed to malaria in Senegal have made the country into a potential candidate for the pre-elimination stage of malaria. By 2015, the country aims to reach the sixth MDG related to malaria (Stopping the spread of the epidemic). Yet many questions remain at the sub-national level, particularly around the capital. First, the complexity of urban malaria and the obstacles caused by the lack of high-quality data about the incidence and prevalence rate make difficult such goals. Without being pessimistic, caution should be required.
A cross-sectional study conducted in 2008, shows areas where the prevalence rate is above 5%, the threshold necessary to pre-elimination phase according to WHO criteria. While the transmission is thus low on average, some hyper localized outbreaks persist and maintain a risk of epidemic development during the seasonal transmission (the rainy season).
The determinants of the risk of transmission are studied in the light of regional data coming from the last census. A final model locates the vulnerable urban areas and highlights the sensitive areas to target. This interest corresponds to the objectives defined by the protocol of Hyogo, to create specific programs for vulnerable groups.

India is in a race to reduce Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) to ‘28’ and Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) to ‘109’, by 2015. Using a standardized de-composition technique and by using latest IMR/MMR data for the states and the nation during the period 1990-2010, we estimated percent net-contribution of 15 populous states and different periods in shaping India’s IMR/MMR. By fitting linear and exponential regression-curves, predicted IMRs/MMRs for India and 15 populous states, for 2015. Due to favourable contribution to maternal mortality reduction efforts from Uttar Pradesh (33%), Bihar/Jharkhand (19%) and Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh (11%) - India is predicted to attain MDG-5 target by 2016, assuming the pace of decline observed in MMR during 1997-2009 continue to follow a linear-trend. However, the wait may continue until 2023-24 if MMR decline in India follows an exponential-trend. Attaining MDG-4 may take until 2023-24/2033-34, due to low acceleration in IMR decline in Bihar/Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh/Uttarakhand and Rajasthan. Maximum decline in MMR during 2004-09 coincided with up-take of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) interventions. Although, India as a nation is not predicted to attain MDGs-4&5, four of its states are predicted to do so. During 1990-2010, MMR reduction efforts were more effective than IMR reduction efforts.

This paper uses two classes of multidimensional indices to measure countries’ evolution towards the achievement of United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Our results suggest that improvements in the different MDGs tend to be uncorrelated among them and, on average, countries are largely off-track in their way towards MDGs achievement. This evolution has been highly uneven across countries and dimensions. While population growth is negatively associated to countries’ MDGs improvement, the latter is unrelated to countries’ economic growth, therefore posing a great challenge for international development agencies and national governments who aim to promote simultaneous progress in the different MDGs.

The 1993 National Population Policy of Ethiopia: The guiding theories
(Terefe Degefa, PhD)
Center for Population Studies, College of Development Studies,
Addis Ababa University, Email: TerefeD@yahoo.com

Abstract

The National Population Policy of Ethiopia was finalized in 1993. The pace of its implementation has however been slow. It is posited that the theoretical basis of the policy could have played an important role in slowing implementation. A discourse analysis of the content of the policy document is made to analyze theories that guided the policy per se. The roles of global theories expressed as pessimistic and optimistic discourses influence policymaking. However, the former (neo-Malthusianism), which claims that rapid population growth is a menace to development processes, has had the upper hand in Ethiopia, regardless of the resistance it receives. This resistance indicates, it is argued, an obvious need for rigorous research to initiate debate and establish consensus, and in this way allow the cultivation of homegrown theoretical frameworks that could provide guidance to the policy and enhance its implementation activities.

Key words: Population policy, theory, discourse, discourse analysis, theoretical frameworks, homegrown theoretical framework.

Studies examining the link between the number of siblings and children’s education in Africa have given mixed results. Moreover, the potential for unobserved heterogeneity bias raises questions about how best to interpret any observed association. Using DHS data from 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and a multilevel multiprocess model that controls for time-invariant unobserved mother-level characteristics, we find indications that younger siblings increase the likelihood of entering primary school. However, once a child is enrolled, the number of pre-school aged siblings is negatively related to educational progression. The number of siblings older than 15 increases the chance of primary school entry and completion, but has no effect on subsequent transitions. There are also some positive effects of the number of siblings aged 6-15. Girls are more adversely affected by having young siblings than boys, but also benefit more from having siblings older than 15. Nonetheless, on the whole, the number of siblings is not an important determinant of children’s education. The results underscore the need to develop detailed measures of sibling groups which capture age variations in school participation and potential contributions to production.