Surprisingly however, in the midst of this impressive progress, socio-economic disparities remain entrenched.
Uneven progress: impressive gains and daunting disparities The story of global development – of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Millennium Declaration – is not an easy one to tell.
The overall impressive decreases in injury rates mask disparities by gender, socioeconomic background and ethnicity (Mytton et al. 2012).
Finding the children left behind: But this impressive overall success conceals the fact that disparities are widening between the rich and the poor, the Kinh majority and ethnic minorities, and between urban and rural areas.
In India and the Philippines, the disparities were still apparent but much less impressive (∼10 percentage points higher).
Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all embraced similar changes which, by the end of the decade, had produced impressive growth but also high inflation, stubborn unemployment and yawning rates of income disparity.
But there are local tensions: "There is a huge disparity of wealth," said Simon Withers as he watched workmen board up the frontage to the impressive terraced house at 1 Ladbroke Gardens.
This disparity is untenable.
