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groups. Income maintenance benefits for short-term contingencies, i.e. sickness, maternity and employment injury meet some very urgent needs, are relatively easy to administer and yield immediate benefits both for the insured persons concerned and for society. Moreover, they have a considerable educational value in introducing social security to the populations of developing countries deriving from the fact that the benefits are immediate and tangible.
The coverage of long-term contingencies, i.e. invalidity, old age and death of the breadwinner, will present considerable difficulties in the conditions of developing countries. Invalidity due to employment injury will normally be the first to be covered by the transformation of measures based on employer liability. The general schemes not related to employment will, however, require a great deal of administrative skill to get under way and a necessary infrastructure for the handling and investment of financial reserves created in the course of its opera- tions.
The problems of income maintenance in contingencies related not to sone physical impairment of the wage earner but rather to general conditions of society will be, by definition, more closely determined by the particular situation of a developing country. The case for family allowances providing a social income supplement to normal wages on account of family responsibilities may be less evident in a developing country where the psychological impact of an ad hoc benefit much more than an income-tax reduction is likely to go against the interests of the country's population policy. Nevertheless, the experience of French-speaking Africa seems to indicate that under specific conditions positive results may be achieved. Whatever line may be taken on this issue it seems obvious that the question of family allowances should be discussed in relation to incomes policy, on the one hand, and in relation to family policy, on the other. Other measures within the scope of the family policy, e.g. family planning, may usefully be brought under the social security concept.
The introduction of unemployment insurance is certainly not a working proposition in the early stages of the development of a social security system in a low-income country when all efforts have to be concentrated on the creation of employment and prevention of unemployment within the framework of appropriate social and economic policies. If the industrialised countries begin to take the view that unemployment insurance is only a measure of last resort to intervene in case of failure of employment policies, there are even stronger reasons for the developing countries to adopt the same attitude. It would also seem meaningful that, at the institutional level, any unemployment insurance schemes which may be created become attached to the bodies responsible for the promotion of employment.
The problem of contingencies to be covered changes radically when applied to the agricultural population and to the marginal population strata. As a recent UN paper puts it: "While increase of production is universally acknowledged to be a major goal of development, it is not the amount of production but the security of production that is often the issue of immediate and vital significance for low- income populations of developing countries."i The security of production
is,
cf course, in this context, an equivalent of security of income but this way cf presenting the problem makes more cbvious the need for adopting social protection techniques different from those applied in the case of industrial wages.
As for the low-income marginal strata, which constitutes the majority of the urban population in many developing countries, their needs are well analysed by another author, arguing that their priorities are quite different from those of urban wage earners. "Retirement pensions probably fall outside the scope of their immediate aspirations and their forms of employment as well as their low life expectancies would make such pensions hardly relevant. Although their response to preventive health measures may be apathetic, free medical importance to them. Family allowances have an obvious appeal to fertility and subsistence levels of living. Secure tenure cf a dwelling or even of a space on which to erect a shack is anxiously sought."2 Needless to say, the real solution to their problems must again be sought in security of employment, which is to them what security of production is to the farmers.
care is of crucial groups with high
1 See UNRISD: "Unified Approach to Development Analysis and Planning", op. cit.
2 See Marshall Wolfe, op. cit., p. 174.
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