ABSTRACT
Premature deaths from NCDs reduce productivity, curtail economic growth and trap populations in poverty. Poverty disproportionately exposes people to both behavioural and environmental risk factors for NCDs and, in turn, NCDs can drive families into poverty and exacerbate economic and health inequities. This chapter explains how the differential prevalence of NCDs within and across populations, particularly in developing countries, constitutes one of the major challenges for development in the 21st century, which undermines social and economic development throughout the world and threatens the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The rise of the burden of NCDs among younger populations in developing countries now jeopardizes the ‘demographic dividend’ – the economic benefits expected when a relatively large proportion of the population is of working age. The chapter describes how addressing NCDs in populations supports the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The chapter also describes examples of linkages between NCDs and a number of non-health SDGs, the relationship between NCDs and gender and the relationship between NCDs, other ill health conditions and sustainable development.
