checking the facts
Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 03:45 PM
True or false?
a) Beijing has lower infant mortality than New York
b) The USA is the only industrialized country with "appreciable" poverty
These two "facts" came up in our open-source open phones today.
Fact (a) is pretty easily confirmed. Our dear caller most likely got the information from a recent Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times. The New York City Department of Health confirmed the New York number for us--it was 6.5 per thousand in 2003 (the most recent year.)
The People's Daily offers a stat from 2001--5.05 per thousand. If Kristof's numbers are to believed, this rate is declining--the most recent rate is 4.6. In New York City, mortality in 2003 was up 8% from 2002.
Now...fact (b) is much harder to verify. We promise to make an early morning call to the UN's office of the Human Rights Commissioner in Geneva (they seem to follow such things). Does anybody have some kind of reliable, agreed-upon yardstick to measure this "fact" by?
And how about this question: why does everyone want to share unflattering facts about the United States?
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