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
