Summary (English)

The dramatic slowdown in global economic growth could begin to erode human development gains and that the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 is likely to be undermined. In order to prove these conclusions, this paper contributes in three ways:

First, it briefly reviews the empirical literature and outlines the possible transmission of the crisis from the broader global economy to the national economy, and eventually to households, children and women.

Second, it summarizes some of the emerging accounts from the field based on reports and interviews of poor people, suggesting that households—and in particular children and women—face severe strain as the crisis has begun to unfold.

A third contribution is an empirical analysis of the historical relationship between episodes of growth accelerations and decelerations with country level aggregate indicators of human development (e.g. life expectancy, infant and under-5 mortality and school enrolment), using data covering the period between 1980 and 2006.