The MDGs won't be met. Is anyone surprised?

The UN hasn't given up the fight for progress toward the Millennium Development Goals, but 90 million MORE people are living on <US $1.25 / day than in 2007! Other indicators also show regression: 

Major advances in the fight against extreme poverty from 1990 to

2005, for example, are likely to have stalled. During that period,

the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day decreased

from 1.8 billion to 1.4 billion. In 2009, an estimated 55 million to

90 million more people will be living in extreme poverty than

anticipated before the crisis.

Likewise, the encouraging trend in the eradication of hunger since

the early 1990s was reversed in 2008, largely due to higher food

prices. The prevalence of hunger in the developing regions is now

on the rise, from 16 per cent in 2006 to 17 per cent in 2008. A

decrease in international food prices in the second half of 2008

has failed to translate into more affordable food for most people

around the world.

The news is all-over terrible: about at 20 percent increase in the numbers of working poor in development countries; no reduction in the number of under-nourished people; unsurprisingly, world unemployment (6.1%) and the unemployment rate of women (6.5%) [and how do they measure _that_?] has lurched upward, and so on.

Where is the good news? Well, Universal Primary Education is increasing! (Whoo Hoo.) And more people have mobile phones.  

The question, at least for me, is who is outraged about this failure? The development agencies are the purported implementers of solutions, the business-end of the development "mechanism," they perceive themselves as too culpable in relation to these failures on many fronts to call much attention to it. Except insofar as they can keep using the MDGs (and Bono, and Angelina) to inflate public interest and understanding. The 180+ governments who signed the MDG charter or whatever it is are equally uninterested in complaining about the crummy job done by the development agencies, because they understand that they themselves routinely fail to meet their commitments for funding. And there are no votes involved, after all. 

The question is, who does that leave?

You, me, and William Easterly, who as usual offers a more powerful and informed critique. (A bit more self-interested, perhaps.) 

7/14/09 14:24 Interest in computer science is DECLINING among US girls According to an extensive study by the Nat'l Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT):

Among female college-bound-high-school seniors taking the SAT in 2006, only one percent--fewer than 5,000 students--indicated computer and information sciences as an intended major This is a nearly 50 percent decline from 1996, when women comprised one-quarter of all students intending to major in computer and information sciences.

The study, "Evaluating Promising Practices in Informal Information Technology," goes on to state that the number of B.S. in C.S. degrees awarded to women in the US was the same in 2004 as it was in 1985.

Although I don't know the overall distribution of bachelor's degrees among women and men, this situation doesn't seem like good news for a country and economy that are becoming increasingly reliant on innovation.