Title:
World Bank Sees Progress on Development Goals
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
The World Bank says most developing countries have
made important progress toward the United Nations'
Millennium Development Goals. In April, the
international lender released its yearly World
Development Indicators. Hundreds of indicators are
used to measure progress in areas such as education,
health, poverty, the environment and trade. One of
the Millennium Development Goals is to reduce by
half the number of people living in extreme poverty
by twenty fifteen. Out of eighty-seven countries
with data available, forty-nine seem likely to reach
that goal. "Extreme poverty" is defined as earning
less than one dollar a day. Another goal is to make
education available to all young children. The
report shows that in two thousand seven, seven out
of ten children lived in developing countries that
had met or were close to meeting that goal. Also,
thirty-nine countries have achieved or are likely to
achieve the goal of reducing child death rates. The
target is a two-thirds reduction by twenty fifteen.
And the report from the World Bank shows the first
reduction in AIDS-related deaths. But even with all
the progress, there is still a long way to go to
reach all eight goals approved by world leaders ten
years ago. This is especially true in sub-Saharan
Africa, which falls behind on all of the goals. Eric
Swanson is a program manager for the World
Development Indicators. He said there was a decade
or more of very slow economic progress in the
nineteen nineties in Africa. There were civil wars
and other disruptions. And there was poor governance
in many countries that has not permitted the economy
to grow and has not allowed poor people to share in
the benefits of growth.Still, he points to some
hopeful signs -- including a large reduction in the
child death rate in Malawi. The World Bank also
launched a new "open data initiative." The bank will
make its data on living conditions around the world
publicly available. Officials say this will make it
easier to measure the effects of policies and
develop new solutions to help the world's poor. And
that's the VOA Special English Development Report.
You can comment on our programs and learn about
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is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
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