The Atlas of Global Development: A Visual Guide to the World’s Greatest Challenges has the goal of presenting some of the world’s development challenges by translating data into understandable maps. The atlas illustrates the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that member nations of the United Nations (UN) have agreed to achieve by 2015. The goals range from halving world poverty through halting the spread of AIDS to providing universal primary education.

Social, economic, and environmental issues are presented through world maps, tables, graphs, text and photographs. Drawing on data from the World Bank's World Development Indicators, the book compares social indicators like life expectancy, infant mortality, safe water, population, growth, poverty, and energy efficiency. The book has been published as a resource by the Bank since 1966, but this 37th edition covers a broader range of topics than its predecessors, according to the World Bank Office of Publications.

Chapters include:

1. Rich and poor
   • Measuring Income
   • Growth and opportunity
   • How poor is poor?
2. People
   • The world's growing population
   • Demographic transitions
   • People on the move
3. Education
   • Education opens doors
   • Gender and development
4. Health
   • Children under five-struggling to survive
   • Improving the health of mothers
   • Communicable diseases-too little progress
5. Economy
   • Structure of the world's economy
   • Infrastructure for development
   • Investment for growth
   • Improving the investment climate
   • Governance
   • The integrating world
   • Aid for development
   • External debt
6. Environment
   • The urban environment
   • Feeding a growing world
   • A thirsty planet gets thirstier
   • Forests
   • Energy use and a warmer world

Click here to access the World Bank Publications website for purchase of this book.