This book investigates the impact of global goals and quantitative target setting as central instruments for defining global priorities. Building on 11 case studies, this book provides a goal-by-goal analysis by leading specialists of how the MDGs have shifted policy agendas and reshaped concepts. It offers insights for a more rigorous use of indicators and cautions on their limitations and perverse consequences. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.

1. The Power of Numbers: A Critical Review of Millennium Development Goal Targets for Human Development and Human Rights 2. Global Goals as a Policy Tool: Intended and Unintended Consequences 3. National or International Poverty Lines or Both? Setting Goals for Income Poverty after 2015 4. The MDG Hunger Target and the Competing Frameworks of Food Security 5. Full Employment Target: What Lessons for a Post-2015 Development Agenda? 6. Measuring Education for the Millennium Development Goals: Reflections on Targets, Indicators, and a Post-2015 Framework 7. No Empowerment without Rights, No Rights without Politics: Gender-equality, MDGs and the post-2015 Development Agenda 8. The Questionable Power of the Millennium Development Goal to Reduce Child Mortality 9. Why Global Goals and Indicators Matter: The Experience of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the Millennium Development Goals 10. Millennium Development Goal 6: AIDS and the International Health Agenda 11. Muddying the Water? Assessing Target-based Approaches in Development Cooperation for Water and Sanitation 12. The City is Missing in the Millennium Development Goals 13. Analysis of Millennium Development Goal 8: A Global Partnership for Development

Alicia Ely Yamin is a Lecturer on Global Health and Policy Director at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, USA. Her career bridges academia and activism. She has published dozens of scholarly articles and books, and regularly advises UN agencies on global health, and development issues.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr is a Professor of International Affairs at The New School, New York City, USA. She is a development economist who has published widely on a broad range of development policy related issues and is best known for her work as director and lead author of the UNDP Human Development Reports 1995-2004.