At the Publishers' Lunch I attended last week, Joel Klein mentioned that the people who build private prisons in the US use third grade (that's about age eight for the non-Americans) illiteracy levels as their key to how many people are going to be in prison in ten, fifteen years, and how many prison cells they're going to need to build.
Thanks to Loki for digging that fact up.
Maybe while Bono and P. Wolfowitz lead the third world out of financial misery they could also address literacy issues ? ANd provide universal access to Ikea & Starbucks. Just a thought.