Global Monitoring Report 2013 : Rural-Urban Dynamics and the Millennium Development Goals

The 2013 Global Monitoring Report (GMR) marks the tenth edition of the Global Monitoring Report since the inception of the report in 2004. The Global Monitoring Report continues to provide an annual assessment of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This assessment allows the World Bank and the IMF together with the larger international development community to reinforce accountabilities among developing and developed countries and institutional partners. As a monitoring report, the Global Monitoring Report draws on recent and ongoing research work at the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN, and other outside sources. The theme of this year's report, rural urban dynamics, is highly relevant for assessing progress within the current MDG framework, but it also has the potential to inform discussions about the post-2015 development framework. Urbanisation matters for the MDGs in several ways. Two main channels by which the MDGs are impacted are through the benefits of agglomeration, as cities have the potential to generate higher living standards for all their residents (not just migrants), and through the benefits of scale economies, as basic public services can be provided at lower unit cost in urban areas. Overall, urbanisation can play a positive role in reaching both the income and service delivery MDGs if these potential benefits of agglomeration and scale economies are realised. In addition, the official list of MDG indicators calls for disaggregating the MDGs by urban/rural as far as possible. This disaggregation has not been addressed in earlier GMRs.