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Missing Targets: An alternative MDG midterm report
What are we missing here
As in the 2003 and 2005 reports the overall picture
conveyed in the 2007 report has been consistently rosy.
It’s as if government need only to keep the momentum
where it’s doing all right, focus on where it’s lagging
behind, then the country should be on its way to meeting
its MDG targets. Really
The data cannot be taken at face value, to begin
with. How they are used to support the overall picture
has to be examined more carefully, if only to disprove
the negative view of Philippine reality held by many,
to say nothing about regular surveys done by the Social
Weather Stations (SWS), Pulse Asia, and other research
institutions.
One cannot really be sure about the overall
picture an MDG report projects. Are we talking real
progress here A “better” indicator value may reflect
an improvement in the actual situation, a revision of
data, or a combination of both. UN statisticians have
cautioned that many indicators are sensitive to natural
fluctuations in small reference populations. A drop in
the girls-to-boys’ ratio at any level of education, for
example, may reflect a natural fluctuation in the sex
ratio, rather than that a larger proportion of girls than
boys is going to school now than before. Or a reduction
in poverty rate may be exploited to draw a rosier picture
than if one highlights the sheer size of the population
beneath the poverty and hunger thresholds or the depth
of deprivation.
Poverty statistics provide clues but tell only so
much. Their positive significance would diminish
greatly if set against inequality indicators. The numbers
speak mostly of national averages which tend to paper
over realities of deprivation and inequality between
urban and rural, across regions, social classes, gender,
households.
Some data just don’t seem to add up. Or maybe
our perspectives and analysis simply differ.
Tables 3, 4 and 5 are illustrative. They depict a
mixed picture at best. For one, they underline the need
for data reconciliation and improvement of data quality.
But more important, they suggest that we need to go
beyond the numbers.
Table 3 shows the Philippines falling further
behind and this is consistent with Social Watch 2007
global report that ranked the Philippines 77th or very
low. But Tables 4 and 5 show the country as doing
positively on most MDG goals and indicators and,
somewhat counter intuitively, contradicts many perceptions,
surveys, and assessments that the country is
doing very poorly.
These three tables have been reconstructed from
the data and information provided by the 2006 and
2007 progress reports of the UN-ESCAP, UNDP
and ADB. The 2006 report updated the 2005 report
A Future Within Reach. The 2007 midterm report
updated the data in the 2006 report. Table 3 was
derived from texts of the section Overall country assessment
on pages 6-7 of the 2006 report. Table 4 was
culled out from Table 2 of the 2006 report. Table 5
was first sorted out of the Statistical Appendix of the
2006 report then corrected based on the 2007 report.
The classification of countries is based on indicator
values obtained from the continuously evolving data
base of the UN Department of Economic and Social
Affairs.
Early achievers means that the target has already
been met in the year of the latest observation, thus the
required rate of change equals zero. On track means
that the absolute estimated rate of progress is larger
than or equal to the absolute required rate of change.
Slow progress means that the absolute estimated rate of
progress is smaller than or equal to the absolute required
rate of change. Regressing means that the sign of the
estimated rate of progress is the opposite of the sign of
the required rate of change.
For indicators without explicit quantitative target,
no required rate of change can be calculated so that
classification is based on the estimated rate of change
alone. The rate of change is positive or negative if the
target is to reduce from the baseline value. On track
means the rate of change equals zero.
A number of shortcomings should be considered,
however. One, the measure does not reflect by “how
much” a country is off track for any given indicator. A
country that is slightly off track is counted in the same
way as a country that is moving rapidly away from the
target. Two, each indicator is implicitly “weighted”
equally, irrespective of its contribution to “overall MDG
progress”. Three, a country may make rapid progress
and be on track for an indicator, but still may have a
serious remaining problem.
Table 3 shows where the Philippines stands relative
to other countries in the region. The country is classed
as falling further behind, along with the only other
ASEAN 5 member in the group, Indonesia, and also
S O C I A L W A T C H P H I L I P P I N E S