The Millennium Declaration provided considerable impetus to refocus the efforts of development agents around the world on the major ethical challenge of eradicating global poverty. The MDGs that followed have become an important mechanism for pursuing the agenda of the Millennium Declaration. We are now, however, at a point where reflection on the MDG framework is called for. In this article we explore what the contribution of a concept of (3‐dimensional) wellbeing might bring to a revived MDG momentum.