Last updated on October 30, 2011
A hard-hitting, must-read Global Dashboard post by David Steven in reaction to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2012’s claim that “four million girls and women ‘go missing’ each year in developing countries”:
So what’s going on? The answer is slightly hard to follow: girls are significantly less likely to die of infectious diseases than boys, but they are even less likely to die of perinatal conditions (in or just after childbirth). So while all children benefit as infectious diseases are tackled, girls benefit slightly more than boys.
In other words, there’s no discrimination in play and this section of the report is based on a statistical artefact. Or a red herring. Or a tendentious attempt to beef up a press release (and if the result implies the health of poor girls matters more than that of poor boys – well, hey ho).
My conclusion: the 4 million figure is an advocacy stat of the worst kind. Lazy in its execution. And borderline dishonest in its presentation – especially for those who read the op-ed, and fail to find the detail buried in the report.
The WDR website may be cock-a-hoop that it garnered “156 news stories published by lead print news outlets across the world, in just a week.” But I don’t think a blitz of favorable media for the Bank is what the WDR should be all about…
This post is merely a digest of David’s post, so be sure to read his post in its entirety.