Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 16, 1993 TAG: 9305160131
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Disparities among ethnic, gender and economic groups are stark, even in the United States, which now ranks sixth after Japan, Canada, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden on the Human Development Index that rates standards of living.
But when separated by ethnic groups, U.S. whites rank first in the world, while African-Americans come in 31st, after citizens of poor Caribbean nations such as Trinidad and Tobago.
Hispanic Americans come in 35th, behind residents of struggling former Soviet satellites such as Estonia or Third World countries like South Korea - and just ahead of Chile, Russia and Malta.
"Full equality is a distant prospect in the United States," the 1993 U.N. Human Development Report concludes.
The infant mortality rate for blacks, for example, is more than twice as high as that for whites, while per capita income for blacks is $13,378, only 60 percent of the white per capita income of $22,372. And more than half of black American children are growing up in single-parent homes, almost three times the rate of white Americans.
Yet the report cites the United States not because of its inequities, but for its successes - and the implications for the rest of the world.
"The United States has a commendable record on human rights and affirmative action. It is an open society, with nondiscrimination written into law and a media that keeps pressure on the issue. And there have been tremendous improvements in integration since the 1960s," said Mahbub ul-Haq, former Finance and Planning Minister of Pakistan and now chief architect of the U.N. Development Program's annual report.
"But the United States still has grave problems, which only shows how far most other countries have to go."
Almost every country has at least one and often several underprivileged ethnic groups, according to the report.
The infant mortality rate among Guatemala's Indian population is 20 percent higher than among the rest of the population. In South Africa, half the population, mainly blacks, lives below the poverty line, while 5 percent of the population, mostly white, owns 88 percent of all private property.
Worldwide, "exclusion, rather than inclusion, is the prevailing reality," Haq said.
But the problem is not limited to minorities. Worldwide, the majority of people are still excluded from full economic participation.
More than a billion of the world's people - one in every four - languish in absolute poverty, for example, while the richest one-fifth has more than 150 times the income of the poorest fifth.
"For millions of people all over the world, the daily struggle for survival absorbs so much of their time and energy that, even if they live in democratic countries, genuine political participation is, for all practical purposes, a luxury," according to the report, which was prepared by an independent team of economists for the United Nations.
The case of women offers another stark example. Although they form a majority globally, women are vastly underrepresented in political systems, occupying only about 10 percent of parliamentary seats and fewer than 4 percent of cabinet posts, the U.N. report says.
In 1993, only six countries had female heads of government. In several countries women still don't have the right to vote.
The disparities are not just in Third World countries. Japan, which ranks highest of all nations in criteria making up the Human Development Index, drops to 17th when the index is adjusted for gender disparity.
Rural populations are another excluded majority. "Despite making up around two-thirds of the [world] population, they receive on average less than a quarter of the education, health, water and sanitation services," the report says.
by CNB