... But severe poverty afflicts a quarter of the world.

Two years after a ground-breaking United Nations summit meeting drew international attention to the growing dangers of poverty, unemployment and social disintegration, the Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis (DESIPA) has prepared the 1997 Report on the World Social Situation, which finds that, despite marked progress in raising levels of income, almost one quarter of the world's population live in a state of severe poverty. The overwhelming majority of the poor live in south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, China, east Asia and the Pacific.

According to the Report, the recent world economic performance is characterized by an annual growth rate of 2.5 per cent (1994-1996), a rate which is still lower than the average rate of the 1980s, because of the weakness of the economic recovery in developed economies. The current pattern of global economic strengthening reflects a broad-based expansion among countries, mostly among transition and developing economies, which have improved their competitiveness and exports due to reduced trade barriers, earlier stabilization measures and structural adjustment efforts.

Continued strong international financial flows since the early 1990s have supplemented domestic resources of recipient countries. But many developing countries remain severely indebted, and current per capita income levels remain below those of 1980 in much of Africa, Latin America and west Asia. The economic recovery of developed economies exhibits modest growth, virtual stagnation of real wages and high levels of unemployment.

The Report focuses on three aspects of the global health situation: the decline of life expectancy (particularly in Africa and the transition economies), the burden of ill health and the emergence of new infectious diseases. For instance, it points out that malnutrition, poor water supply, sanitation and hygiene are responsible for 30 per cent of the disease burden in developing countries. Incurable diseases that have emerged in addition to AIDS are drug-resistant malaria, tuberculosis and cholera. Attention is also drawn to the fact that the two largest risk factors in both the developed and transition economies are tobacco and alcohol.The total number of undernourished in the developing world exceeds the total population of the developed world.

In its assessment of education, the Report concludes that enrolment in primary and secondary schools has risen since 1960 from an estimated 250 million children to more than 1 billion. The enrolment in higher education more than doubled in the past 20 years, from 28 million students in 1970 to more than 60 million today. The number of literate adults has almost tripled, from approximatively 1 billion in 1960 to more than 2.7 billion. However, despite enormous efforts to eradicate adult illiteracy, the absolute number of illiterate adults has increased from 877 million in 1980 to 885 million in 1995, the majority of which (872 million) live in developing countries.

The rapid growth rate in south and east Asia, combined with supportive macroeconomic and trade policies, has helped to diminish absolute poverty in these regions. But, there has been a large increase in poverty in low-income countries, especially in the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Increased poverty in some Latin American countries is being attributed to the debt crisis of the 1980s and ineffective stabilization policies.

The Report discusses several strategies for reducing poverty. Those include promoting high rates of economic expansion, creating employment, investing in human capital, advancing opportunities for the poor, targeting poverty and providing a safety net for vulnerable groups. It also describes in detail the structural changes in labour markets, in particular the segments of women and youth, and the employment situations and policies of developed, developing and transitional economies. Despite the re-emergence of unemployment as a policy focus, the Report concludes that the world economy is absorbing the bulk of a rapidly rising global labour force, which is better educated, possesses greater skills and is more mobile than ever before. As a result, it proposes employment policies that conform with rapid changes in economic conditions.

Discussing discrimination and intolerance, the Report shows how discriminatory practices are based on embedded social mechanisms or explicit public policies on the gender division of labour, political contexts, education, households and access to credit. It also discusses the effectiveness of several policies and measures to combat discrimination, such as quotas, reverse discrimination, positive action or affirmative action, which institute preferences for members of certain disadvantaged groups. The Report notes, however, that those policies tend to increase disparities within minority groups and that policies which attack the underlying factors of discrimination and inequality may be more effective.