Does Increased Globalization Improve Citizens' Quality of Life?

Countries are more open than ever to the outside world, however research is still undecided about what effects it will have on the country’s culture and way of life. In a world where many policy makers are worried about the expansion of free trade and cheaper foreign labor, we are not certain how a country’s strivings to reach this goal of more “open” economy will or will not give their citizens a better quality of life. I will attempt to gain insight into that question using the United Nation’s millennium goals; my research uses econometric techniques to tease out possible connections between economic exports and imports over GDP, “openness,” and the maximum, minimum, and average millennium development goals within a country utilizing data from 1965 until 2015. My work aims to pinpoint the factors present in a country such as political stability or population growth that are connected to the progress seen on increasing citizen’s quality of life. I hope my research will make it possible for policymakers to understand how their work to reach these millennium development goals might be improved.