Social security: a promise to citizens not realized and increasingly neglected, this year's Social Watch report says

Hunger Notes

(November 25, 2007) Social security--the idea that people should be assisted in confronting  major threats to their basic well-being such as unemployment and old age--has reached a very small percentage of people in developing countries and is being weakened in both developing and developed countries, according to the recently released Social Watch report.

Relatively adequate social security coverage reaches only one in five people in the world, the report notes, with wide differences between countries and regions.

• In the less developed countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia more than 90% of people have no coverage whatsoever
• In Southeast Asia and East Asia coverage varies from 10% to 100% and is on the rise
• In Latin America coverage varies from 10% to 80%, and improvement is stagnant
• In European countries that are ‘in transition’ (former members of the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact), coverage is between 50% and 80%
• In most developed countries there is practically 100% coverage

The US report "Social security--not yet social, or secure", authored by organizations including the World Hunger Education Service that publishes Hunger Notes, noted the strong pressures for reduction of social security in the United States, principally  Republican and financial sector pressures for  privatization of social security and  the drumbeat of concern by conservatives and frequently the press that US social security is financially unsustainable.  This "unsustainablity" concern is in spite of the fact that Social Security will not have deficits (negative cash flows) for 10 years and will not exhaust its surplus of cash and have to borrow (creating debt) for 30 years, while the  current US government deficits (essentially caused by sharply cutting taxes principally benefitting the rich and  increasing US military and related spending) and the accompanying  US government debt created by borrowing each year to finance these deficits are far larger right now  than these future social security problems.

The forces leading to weakening of social security benefits in many other countries, which for developing countries included World Bank and IMF structural adjustment policies,  were also analyzed.

Social Watch is a confederation of organizations in 70 countries with the aim of reminding governments of their obligations and tracking their implementation.  In the United States, these organizations include ActionAId, the Center of Concern, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the Global-Local Links Project and the World Hunger Education Service, the publisher of Hunger Notes.  For  answers to basic questions on Social Security's future, see http://www.ssa.gov/qa.htm