UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) Policy Briefs

This year marks the 20-year milestone of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, a landmark agreement in which Governments committed to “building a society for all ages”. The Madrid Plan of Action contains a broad range of objectives, including that of reducing poverty among older persons. Poverty is a particular risk for older persons. Most people work less or stop working altogether at some point in old age, either for health reasons, family responsibilities, because they must or want to retire at the statutory retirement age, or because discrimination undermines their employment opportunities. While many older persons remain productive, many of their contributions to their countries’ economies, to their communities and to their families are not formally recognized or paid. Their economic well-being depends on the availability of public income support, affordable health care, family support and savings to a greater extent than that of the working-age population. Because of the disadvantages they experience throughout their lives, older women may suffer from higher levels of poverty than old men.

On 15 November 2022, the world’s population is projected to reach 8 billion people, having grown by 1 billion since 2010. This is a remarkable milestone given that the human population numbered under 1 billion for millennia until around 1800, and that it took more than 100 years to grow from 1 to 2 billion. By comparison, the increase of the world’s population over the last century has been quite rapid. Despite a gradual slowing in the pace of growth, the global population is projected to surpass 9 billion around 2037 and 10 billion around 2058 (figure 1). This rapid growth of the human population is a testament to achievements in public health and medicine, such as improvements in sanitation and disease control, better access to clean drinking water, and the development of vaccines, antibacterial drugs and other effective medical therapies. Together with improved nutrition and rising standards of living, such achievements lowered the risk of dying, especially among children, and generated an unprecedented growth of populations throughout the world.

The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in significant output contractions, deteriorating social conditions and worsened debt sustainability. Some countries that had previously attained higher income status and deemed no longer to need grants and concessional finance in the form of Official Development Assistance (ODA) are once again in need of heightened international support. This includes countries that slid back to a lower income category as well as higher income vulnerable countries, such as numerous small island developing States (SIDS), who have found it difficult to respond and recover from the pandemic without support. Access to ODA, including through concessional finance windows at multilateral development banks (MDBs), is generally linked to gross national income (GNI) per capita. As developing countries attain higher income per capita status, access to grants and concessional windows declines. As a result, countries’ average cost of borrowing generally becomes more expensive, with shorter maturities, which can widen financing gaps in normal times. In times of crises, these gaps are magnified, underscoring countries’ need for support. Recognition that the need for support is often linked to factors that are not measured by income has led to MDBs, in particular, to include important exceptions in eligibility criteria, including incorporating vulnerability. However, it has often been ad hoc and not based on a full analysis of risk factors. This policy brief outlines the criteria to access ODA, why it needs to improve and suggests a way forward.

Discrimination, or unjust differential treatment on the basis of, for example, sex, race or ethnicity, age, income or wealth, disability, caste, sexual orientation, religion, or migrant status, causes harm and drives exclusion in social, economic, political and cultural life. Where it occurs in the delivery of public services, it further undermines public trust and confidence in public institutions. In recent years, growing evidence of discrimination has brought the issue to the forefront of many societies and provoked both individual and collective reflection. Although the principles of equality and non-discrimination are widely entrenched, discrimination affects public administration as it does society in general. There is no comparable data across countries that fully sheds light on the level and extent of discrimination by public administration. This may be due to factors such as the difficulties of measuring discrimination, under-reporting of incidents of discrimination and the limited public availability of such reporting, and how broadly non-discrimination is approached (for instance, which groups are protected and to what extent). A limited amount of information is available for some countries and country groupings (mainly developed countries), and some social groups.

Over the last two years, the world economy has been rocked by multiple non-economic shocks, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the war in Ukraine. Climate-related disasters continue to increase in frequency and severity. Together, these events have had enormous socio-economic consequences due to the interrelated nature of economic, social and environmental risks. But not all countries and people have been impacted in the same way, in part because a financing divide is sharply curtailing the ability of many developing countries to respond to shocks and invest in recovery. The outbreak of COVID-19 delivered a seismic shock to the global economy, but developed countries were able to respond with aggressive macroeconomic policies.

Seven years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, many countries still rely on out-of-date and incomplete data to inform its implementation. Millions of people globally are not covered by existing data sources and are therefore excluded from decision-making and policies. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the critical importance of having reliable, timely and disaggregated data to save lives and livelihoods, and exposed the limitations of traditional sources and methods used to produce them. In this context, there is an increased sense of the urgency to use innovative approaches to better meet the data needs to accelerate action towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and build agile and resilient data and statistical systems. Heeding this call, the Data For Now initiative is supporting countries in developing their capacity to leverage innovative sources, technologies and methods to deliver better, more timely and disaggregated data for sustainable development.

World population continues to grow and is expected to peak at a level of almost 11 billion around the year 2100. Most of this growth will take place in low-income and lower middle-income countries.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our times. Sport plays an important role as part of the solution. Sport is a key social platform that can reach and influence millions of peoples worldwide and raise awareness on climate change, promote a culture in favour of climate action, and champion sustainable behaviours. The sport sector can contribute to tackle climate change by reducing sport organizations's climate footprint while governments and international organizations facilitate this goal by setting right policies and guidelines.

Documenting more evidence around post-COVID 19 transport measures can provide useful references in revamping transport systems. It is paramount, however, that governments and the private sector revisit such short-term policies with a view to ensuring that any emergency-based actions that may have had inadvertent negative consequences on sustainable development would not become permanent measures.

INFFs have an important role to play both in the immediate response to the current crisis and in rebuilding better. Integrated financing strategies can serve as a starting point for locally driven reform processes, providing a foundation for action. The INFF methodology puts forward discrete steps to improve financial policymaking.