Publications

Launching the first-ever Sustainable Development Goals report on the new global development agenda adopted in 2015, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the 15-year undertaking was “off to a good start” but would require all parts of the UN family and its partners to work together.

“We have embarked on a monumental and historic journey,” the Secretary-General told the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), which opened on 11 July and ended on 20 July 2016, at the UN Headquarters in New York.

“We must all learn, in national governments, in local authorities, in business and civil society, and also at the United Nations, to think differently,” he…

The lives of women and girls around the world have improved in several areas over the last 20 years, according to the new UN DESA report “The World’s Women 2015,” launched today. Coming on the heels of the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this new set of data on women and girls worldwide brings into sharp perspective the need for gender equality outlined in Goal 5.  

“We cannot achieve our 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development without full and equal rights for half of the world’s population, in law and in practice,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a recent event on gender equality organized on the side of the Sustainable Development Summit.…

The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to a new UN DESA report, “World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision”, launched today.

“Understanding the demographic changes that are likely to unfold over the coming years, as well as the challenges and opportunities that they present for achieving sustainable development, is key to the design and implementation of the new development agenda,” said Wu Hongbo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.

Most of the projected increase in the world’s population can be attributed to a short list of high-…

Evidence shows that the global Goals worked. They galvanized the entire global community to address the most pressing issues at the beginning of the Millennium, centered in lifting people from extreme poverty and improving the lives of those most disadvantaged. “The MDG experience provides compelling evidence that the international community can be mobilized to confront complex challenges. Governments, civil society and a wide range of international actors coalesced behind the MDGs in a multi-front battle against poverty and disease,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

They served as a framework for local, national, regional and global monitoring of development progress…

Today, 54 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66 per cent by 2050. Projections show that urbanization combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban populations by 2050, with close to 90 percent of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa, according to a new United Nations report launched today.

The 2014 revision of the World Urbanization Prospects by UN DESA’s Population Division notes that the largest urban growth will take place in India, China and Nigeria. These three countries will account for 37 per cent of the projected growth of the world’s urban…

Millions of people’s lives have improved due to concerted global, regional, national and local efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which serve as the foundation for the next global development agenda, according to the report launched by the Secretary-General on 7 July 2014.

With many MDG targets already met on reducing poverty, increasing access to improved drinking water sources, improving the lives of slum dwellers and achieving gender parity in primary school, the report says many more targets are within reach by their 2015 target date. If trends continue, the world will surpass MDG targets on malaria, tuberculosis and access to HIV treatment, and the…

World Population Policies 2013 report is part of a series that provides comprehensive and up-to-date available information on the population policy situations and trends for all 193 Member States, two Observer States and two non-member States of the United Nations. The publication documents changes in Government views and policies from 1976 to 2013 with respect to population size and growth, age structure, fertility, reproductive health and family planning, health and mortality, spatial distribution and internal migration, and international migration within the context of demographic, social and economic change.

The publication provides a coherent accounting framework of economic flows from one age group or generation to another, typically for a national population in a given calendar year. This manual presents the concepts, methods and estimation procedures to measure these flows over the life-cycle. The NTA estimates are useful to understand and analyse the implications of changing age structures for the fiscal sustainability of social programs, the accumulation of physical and human capital, economic growth, and familial support for children, youth and older persons.

National Transfer Accounts are consistent with the System of National Accounts (SNA), and provide measures by single…

“The Millennium Development Goals have been the most successful global anti-poverty push in history,” Mr. Ban said. “The MDGs have proven that focused global…

The current world population of 7.2 billion is projected to increase by 1 billion over the next 12 years and reach 9.6 billion by 2050, according to a United Nations report launched today, which points out that growth will be mainly in developing countries, with more than half in Africa.

“Although population growth has slowed for the world as a whole, this report reminds us that some developing countries, especially in Africa, are still growing rapidly,” said the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Wu Hongbo in a press release on the report.

The report, World Population Prospects: the 2012 Revision, notes that the population of developed regions will…

The report presents the yearly assessment of global progress towards the MDGs, highlighting several milestones – three important MDG targets have been met well ahead of the target date of 2015. The report says that meeting the remaining targets, while challenging, remain possible – but only if Governments do not waiver from their commitments made over a decade ago.

Based on a master set of data compiled by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on MDG indicators led by DESA’s Statistics Division, the 2012 report outlines gains in poverty reduction and access to safe drinking water, and an improvement in the lives of slums dwellers in urban areas. The report also highlights important…

Africa and Asia together will account for 86 per cent of all growth in the world’s urban population over the next four decades, adding that this unprecedented increase will pose new challenges in terms of jobs, housing and infrastructure. Africa’s urban population will increase from 414 million to over 1.2 billion by 2050 while that of Asia will soar from 1.9 billion to 3.3 billion, according to the 2011 Revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, produced by the UN Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).

The largest increases in urban population are expected in the following countries: India, China, Nigeria, the United States and Indonesia…