The Continuing Crisis

Look at the title to this graph and then look at the data itself. See any dissonance?

This is where we are in the world today: Almost everything is getting better all over the world, and very rapidly, but the headlines and the text are still writen as if even good news is all bad news.

Food price are going up?

How is that bad news for the poor in the developing world who actually grow food for a living?

You mean people in the developing world have the money to pay more for locally grown food (as almost all food is in the developing world)?

Again, how is this bad?

Look through the graphs in The Millennium Development Goals Report for 2008 and you will see the same thing again and again: a text that suggests crisis, but actual data that says things are actually getting better, quite rapidly, almost everywhere.

What is going on?

Simple: The developing world still needs help, and though rapid progress is being made on almost every front in every region (in part due to falling fertility rates) the United Nations still wants countries and invididuals to help.

What is going on here is not evil. But the story board being told is increasingly at odds with the data.

The good news is that the bad news is not entirely right.

Are things still awful in much of the world? Of course. That has always been true. That is not news.

The real news is that almost everywhere, things are actually getting better.
.