PRESS CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH ‘WORLD ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SURVEY 2007’

Noting that 1.2 billion of the world’s older people were expected to be living without a social safety net in 2050, José Antonio Ocampo, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said today that nations should consider developing a universal social pension scheme offering the equivalent of $1 a day -- the international absolute-poverty line set by the World Bank in 1990.

Mr. Ocampo, speaking this morning at a Headquarters press conference to launch the sixtieth anniversary edition of the World Economic and Social Survey, said the ratio of older persons to working-age citizens had swelled in many industrialized nations, reflecting lower mortality rates and improved health and nutrition.  In developing the report, its authors had conducted an exercise to determine the possibility of creating a basic pension system in very poor countries equivalent to the absolute-poverty line.  The findings indicated that it was possible, spending less than 1 per cent of national income, to fund a pension system for relatively poor countries that would guarantee the absence of extreme poverty in old age.  Armed with that finding, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs “proposed very strongly that we should go in the direction of universalizing basic pensions equivalent to the poverty line for older people”, Mr. Ocampo explained.

He said the 2007 Survey, whose launch was designed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the United Nations Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, and entitled Development in an Ageing World, provided suggestions for meeting expected challenges to national health care and pension systems in the next four and a half decades.  The report is published annually by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Describing population ageing as a universal and fast-paced phenomenon, he said the number of people aged 65 years and older was expected to rise from 670 million to nearly 2 billion between 2005 and 2050.  About one in eight of them were expected to be found in developing countries, carrying the danger of burgeoning “old age poverty” in nations that were poor to begin with.  Poverty in old age had forced many people to work beyond their working life, and the Survey focused on ways in which societies could better integrate the needs of older people.  While it was true that richer nations tended to have well-developed safety nets for older citizens, the Survey had found lower-income countries with extensive pension systems in place, including Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia and Belarus.

It was unlikely that the growing dependency of economies around the world on a shrinking worker base could be solved through increased fertility and migration, he cautioned.  Rather, the problem must be tackled through a mix of solutions that should include increasing women’s participation in the labour force, lengthening the working life and improving worker satisfaction -- all of which should be aimed at improving labour productivity.  “It is quite clear that, if there is no increase in labour productivity in rapidly ageing societies, there will actually be a slowdown in economic growth that will affect everyone,” a fact that was particularly true of such industrialized countries as Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

He said that, in developing countries, such as those in Africa and Latin America, where the ratio of working-age citizens to older people was still relatively high, the significant number of workers expected to enter the labour market meant there was a decade or two in which to ensure income security for all citizens, including older persons.  At the moment, however, pension systems were significantly underdeveloped in those countries, and the Survey noted that an estimated 342 million older persons in developing countries currently lacked adequate income security.

Mr. Ocampo stressed that, while the Survey did not advocate a one-size-fits-all solution, future pension systems should have certain desirable characteristics: they should aim at universal access; be premised on principles of “solidarity”; be equitable; and ensure enough benefits to avoid poverty in old age.

Asked whether he envisioned a United Nations-led movement to implement the Survey’s findings, the Under-Secretary-General said the task of establishing social security systems should be left to individual Governments.  However, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs would strive to develop a more “articulate connection” between the findings and United Nations operational activities, as had been done with another topic under the Department’s purview -- the issue of indigenous peoples.

In response to questions regarding the Thessaloniki Centre for Public Service Professionalism, a United Nations institution in Greece for training Mediterranean-area public administrators that had recently been shut down for reasons of poor performance, Mr. Ocampo said the Department was conducting an internal investigation into possible malpractice.  The selection process might have to be re-examined in light of “incompetence” among the Centre’s staff.

* *** *

For information media • not an official record