Abstract This study identifies and discusses sociodemographic structures, processes and trends that entail risks for individuals, households and communities in the small island developing States of the Caribbean, on the basis of the analysis of the environmental, geographical, economic and institutional vulnerability of these States conducted by ECLAC in the document Equity, development and citizenship, which was presented at the twenty-eighth session of the Commission. The analysis focuses on three sociodemographic issues. First, fertility, which continues to occur early and at high rates am…
Latin America is going through a simultaneous process of population ageing and growing predominance of precarious employment conditions which poses a challenge for contributory pension systems. The solvency of the basic pillars of the unfunded system is being affected by the long-standing decline in the number of active persons whose contributions finance the benefits of retirees. The benefits of the individually funded systems are sensitive to the density of contributions needed to accumulate capital and finance pensions for members with increasingly long life expectancies. This study describ…
Vulnerability is an emerging issue that has been raised repeatedly in sociological analyses at the dawn of the twenty-first century and in debates on public policies aimed at alleviating poverty, promoting upward social mobility and empowering citizens. If this issue has been so topical, it is because a variety of factors, some highly controversial and others difficult to measure accurately, have contributed to the phenomenon. They include: the increasingly unstable macroeconomic context; the frequency with which households lapse into and emerge from poverty, a trend seen even among tradi…
Presentation
The technical study described in this report was undertaken by
the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC);, in response
to a request by the Governments of Argentina and Chile for it to propose a
common standardized methodology for the measurement of defence spending. The
study, which was carried out between the fourth quarter of 1999 and August 2001
was funded by the two Governments concerned.
The first chapter of this report describes the background to the
initiative and the processes carried out by the parties involved. It also
briefly acknowledges the t…