Over half of world’s population now receives social benefits: UN
For the first time, over half of people globally enjoy some form of social benefits, the UN said on Thursday, but said more was needed, including to soften the impact of climate change.
In a fresh report, the United Nations’s International Labour Organization said that 52.4 per cent of the global population currently receives some element of what it calls social protection.
That marks a jump of nearly 10 percentage points since 2015 and the first time that over half of people in the world have at least some coverage, it said.
“While this is welcome progress, the unvarnished reality is that 3.8 billion people are still entirely unprotected,” ILO said, highlighting that more than three-quarters of children globally still have no coverage.
For the ILO, social protection includes access to health care and income security measures related especially to old age, unemployment, sickness, disability, work injury, maternity or the loss of the main breadwinner in a family, as well as extra support for families with children. ILO warned that “the pace to close the protection gaps is too slow”.
“If progress were to continue at this rate at the global level, it would take another 49 years — until 2073 — for everyone to be covered by at least one social protection benefit,” the report cautioned. ILO chief Gilbert Houngbo voiced particular concern over poor coverage rates in many of the world’s countries hardest-hit by climate change, which he said “represents the single, gravest threat to social justice today”. “Many of the countries experiencing the most brutal consequences of this crisis are particularly ill-equipped to handle its environmental and livelihood consequences,” he said in a statement.
In the 20 countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis, a full 91.3 per cent of the population still lack any form of social protection