The World Bank is committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015. As the international community measures its progress toward that goal, it must have solid and credible statistics that show where we are advancing and where we are falling behind. This year’s World Development Indicators gives policymakers that set of statistics—as a tool it can use in the fight against global poverty.

Since 1978 these World Development Indicators have drawn the world’s attention to the successes, failures, and continuing challenges of development. In 1997 World Development Indicators was launched in this new format, accompanied by a CD-ROM. It is now widely available on the World Wide Web. I am proud to have overseen this evolution and to have been able to reach out to so many people with timely and reliable information about our mutual effort to fight poverty in all its forms. 

Much has changed in the past decade. Global output has increased by 25 percent since 1995, and developing countries are leading the way, growing by more than 35 percent. Global population has also increased, from 5.7 billion in 1995 to 6.3 billion in 2004, most of it in developing countries. Although population growth has been slowing, another 1 billion people will be added to the world’s population by 2014. This is one of the great challenges ahead—expanding our economies and social systems to meet the needs of more than 7 billion people, efficiently and equitably.

Achieving all the Millennium Development Goals will require more than economic growth. Those goals are about meeting the most basic needs of people for education, health care, and clean air and water—and empowering people to make choices for themselves and their children. The statistics in World Development Indicators offer evidence of progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. Since 1990 infant mortality rates in low-income countries have fallen from 95 deaths per 1,000 to to 80—still too high, but evidence that further progress can be made. More people have access to water and sanitation services, especially in rural areas. And more girls are attending school, with more than 66 percent of them now completing primary school, up from 57 percent a decade ago.

But we must not be complacent. Progress in some places has been offset by setbacks in others. Inequality within countries is worsening. Disease, armed conflict, and natural disasters have also taken their toll. We know there will be many obstacles ahead. But we must not shrink from the challenge or look the other way. What has been accomplished is evidence of how much more can be accomplished, if we persevere.