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As world leaders meet in New York to discuss progress on the United Nations anti-poverty and development goals, one thing is conspicuously absent. Up-to-date poverty figures. The most recent are five years old. So how on earth will we know in 2015 - the de
As world leaders meet in New York to discuss progress on the United Nations anti-poverty and development goals, one thing is conspicuously absent. Up-to-date poverty figures. The most recent are five years old.
So how on earth will we know in 2015 - the deadline for meeting the Millennium Development Goals - whether we have achieved the targets or not?
"That's the million dollar question," says U.N. statistician Francesca Perucci who has the task of overseeing the mountain of data relating to the eight goals.
Indeed, the MDG number-crunchers are so concerned about how they will assess the project in 2015 that they are holding a meeting in November to discuss how to improve the collection of statistics.
Some data are easier to gather than others. School enrolment (MDG 2) is usually not so difficult. And U.N. agencies have just released figures for child and maternal mortality rates for 2008 (MDG 4 and 5).
The really troublesome statistic is poverty. The headline goal, MDG 1, is a promise to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1.25 a day.
The statisticians are reliant on each country submitting its own data which they then process for comparison. But surveys on income and expenditure are the most difficult and expensive to carry out, Perucci says.
Getting data from poorer countries can be a big problem, especially those affected by conflict where the infrastructure is in tatters.
"The ones who need the data the most ... are the ones who don't have the capacity to produce them, so it's a little bit of a vicious circle," Perucci says.
Afghanistan is a particular headache because of the danger of undertaking surveys in the field. But things have improved since Perucci was there four years ago when the statistical office was an empty building.
"They didn't even have people to hire because most people who had graduated had left the country," she recalls.
CONUNDRUM
So what are the statisticians going to do in 2015?
"That's part of the big discussion now - what are we going to use in 2015 for all the indicators because even for the very good indicators, like education, you (only) have data referring to the year before," Perucci says.
"It's going to be difficult to say, well, in 2015 we won't say anything - we will wait until 2016."
One option might be to present the best possible snapshot of MDG progress in 2015 and follow up later with a more detailed assessment.
But Perucci also stresses that poverty is not just about monetary poverty. People may focus on this figure, but there are many other dimensions to poverty and you should look at the other MDG indicators on child mortality, malnutrition etc to get a complete picture.
Unfortunately for Perucci and her team, she says statistics is something everyone wants but no one wants to pay for.
But this year, for the first time, number-crunchers will get their own day to raise awareness. The United Nations will mark World Statistics Day on Oct. 20.
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