- 145
This
does not necessarily mean that the problems which preoccupy one country do not exist in another; it seems that most of the problems encountered are present in one form or another in each of the countries studied. This only shows that the order of priorities in attending to the existing needs of the population is established differently in ea ch
country. This situation may be the result of the relatively long period of evolution of social security in the countries concerned and it is very likely that the basic preoccupations and
planning targets of developing countries in the early stages of their social security schemes would be more alike. Further research, however, would be required to find out whether this observation is supported by facts. Nevertheless, the example of Latin America points to what seems to be a logical consequence of the dependence of social security schemes on particular socio-economic, political and cultural conditions of the countries which establish them.
Contrary to what has been the case for Africa and Latin America, the publications of the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East do not provide us with a lead as to the position of social security schemes in national development plans.
As we have already mentioned, the economic surveys for 1970 and 1971 included a lengthy discussion of the relationship between economic growth and social justice. The general situation regarding the planning of the social aspect of development has been analysed there with a considerable degree of clarity: "The lack of clear articulation of interrelationships between the economic and social aspects of development in the literature on economic growth, including the plan documents of various countries, also appears to have led to relatively less emphasis being placed on social aspects of development. Since the economic targets in the plans are generally derived on the basis of postulated relationships between purely economic variables, such as investment and output, the bearing on economic growth of such factors as changes in the pattern of income distribution and the living conditions of the poor, which have great social significance, has not received adequate attention. As for programmes designed to improve social welfare directly, the tendency has been to speak largely in qualitative terms, such as better health, better housing and better environmental conditions. The quantification of targets in the social sectors on the basis of specific criteria, which is admittedly difficult, has not received adequate attention, and the bearing of these targets on the levels of living has not been systematically investigated. In short, the development plans of most developing ECAFE countries have been characterised by a rather sparse specific social policy content and, though the importance of social factors has been increasingly recognised in the enunciation of plan cbjectives, the interrelationships between social and economic aspects of development have, to a large extent, remained unexplored and undefined."i
The lack of specific information on the position of social security scheDes among the social aspects of development does not seem to be due, however, to inaccessibility of data. Thus, for instance, the results of a survey on planning and financing of social development in Asia and the Far East, published in 1969, show some interesting figures on government expenditure on "social security and special welfare services" in relation to expenditure on education, health and cther social services. It is not our task here to analyse these figures beyond the basic summary of the survey which states that "in all countries for which data are available (except the developed ECAFE countries), education takes by far the largest share of total social allocations, followed at some distance by public health and, usually at a much greater distance, by social security, social welfare and cther social services".2 We note, however, that this specific inclusion of data on social security is due to the definition of "social services" as elaborated in the UN "Manual for Economic and Functional Classification of Government Transactions", which served as a guide to the preparation of replies to the ECAFE questionnaire.3 We are therefore led to conclude that the general absence of information on social security planning in the studies of the ECAFE is due to a conceptual difficulty in defining the different components of the social sector which, in turn, reflects the same difficulty encountered in most of the national development plans.
• Economic_survey of Asia and the Far East, 1970. p. 118.
2 "The Planning and Financing of Social Development in the ECAFE Region" in Economic Bulletin for Asia_and_the_Far East, June 1969, p. 6.
3 Ibid., p. 27.
E-1195-2H:5