The UN report provides a statistical overview of an unequal world. Despite the harrowing figures, there are grounds for hope, writes Paul Cullen
This year's UNDP Human Development report once again demonstrates that the world is a hugely unequal place. Once again it shows that Irish society is one of the most unequal in the Western world.
Thus, the richest 5 per cent of the world's people have incomes 114 times those of the poorest 5 per cent. A girl born in Japan today has a 50 per cent chance of seeing the 22nd century, while a newborn in Afghanistan has a one-in-four chance of dying before the age of five.
Every day more than 30,000 children around the world die of preventable diseases, and nearly 14,000 people are infected with HIV/AIDS. If tuberculosis control does not improve, a billion people will contract the disease by 2020.
Perhaps we have lost our ability to be moved by such appalling figures. The extent of the challenges is so great that it is easy to feel no progress is being made. Yet this report shows that there are reasons for hope.
The share of people living in global poverty dropped from 29 per cent to 23 per cent during the 1990s.
More children are going to primary school, and more people have access to clean water and sanitation. Since 1980, 81 countries have moved towards becoming democracies.
Further determined action by governments can make a difference.
Benin, for example, with a per-capita gross domestic product of only $990 a year, is on track to put all its primary-age children in school by 2015. In contrast Qatar, with nearly 20 times the income, is falling far behind.
Yet in many of the new democracies the first flush of euphoria is turning to frustration and despair, as the UNDP administrator, Mr Mark Malloch Brown, notes. The failures of fledgling democracies, and their inability to reduce poverty levels, are creating anger and alienation, especially among young people.
"That hostility is triggering a backlash against both existing regimes and the impersonal forces of globalisation," Mr Brown says.
Each year the UNDP report, with its jumble of statistics and trends, is the best snapshot we have for the state of the world. Its human development index (HDI), a composite measure of education, life expectancy and economic wealth, is the best measure of quality of life we have.
The HDI could be said to break down on a "Brussels versus Boston" axis. On the one hand are European states, led by Norway and Sweden, which have high quality of life and low levels of inequality.
On the other lie Ireland, the US and the UK, three states with high economic wealth, but a relatively disappointing ranking on the HDI. Ireland ranks 18th on the index, the same as last year and only three places better than in 1990. It is as though the Celtic Tiger has had no measurable impact.
With a per-capita GDP of $29,866 in 2000, Ireland ranks fourth in the world. Most of us don't feel like we live in such a wealthy country, and indeed GDP figures can be misleading in that they include the earnings of multinationals based in this country.
But the most controversial index in the report for the Government is the one that measures poverty in Western states. Each year this shows Ireland lagging behind its Western neighbours, with large and seemingly intractable concentrations of poverty.
The human poverty index is a composite measure of life expectancy, illiteracy rates, poverty levels and the long-term unemployment rate.
The Government argues that the data used are out of date and therefore don't reflect the progress made in recent years.
It is true that the poverty and illiteracy figures date from 1998. Long-term unemployment has undoubtedly dropped since the data used were gathered in 1999. The UNDP representative at yesterday's launch of the report cautioned that it was "not a good tool to track recent events".
Yet it is easy to imagine governments all over the world yesterday making similar excuses and rebuttals.
Politicians always decry unfavourable statistics; they always claim things are getting better. The UNDP report uses official statistics, and data for all countries usually refer to the same year.
For the moment the report provides the best picture of where we stand - a country with mediocre life expectancy by Western standards, massive levels of functional illiteracy and relatively small numbers of recognised refugees.
Before the new millennium the UN set the world a series of targets to be achieved by 2015, including the halving of world poverty. The report shows that 55 countries are on track to meet these ambitious targets.
However, 33 countries, including the poorest states in Africa, are failing. Now more than ever they need our helping hand.
As Bono says in a contribution to the report: "Individuals, communities and corporations need to step up. Too much is at stake for silence to be anybody's option."