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Chapter 5 - Data Revolution

The Cost and Benefit of Data Needed to Monitor the Post-2015 Development Agenda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2018

Bjorn Lomborg
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
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Summary

The post-2015 data revolution should fundamentally be informed by a cost and benefit analysis. Targeting development as devised in a final outcome document by the Open Working Group presumes the availability of a range of statistics - most if it only available through survey data. This chapter evaluates the cost of the enabling environment and further recommends that: The best possible cost estimates indicate that if the previous MDG agenda would have been measured it would have cost about $28 billion. Yet, as we know there were gaps in the data and many indicators were never properly measured between 1990 and 2015. A future agenda with 169 targets has an estimated cost that is higher than the total annual spent on official development assistance globally.
Type
Chapter
Information
Prioritizing Development
A Cost Benefit Analysis of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals
, pp. 91 - 118
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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