Population and Demography
World Population Prospects Indicators
Ageing in Sustainable and Smart Cities
There is now only a decade left to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to achieve its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A decade of accelerated action is needed to do so and cities are key actors in this process. In an increasingly digitalized world, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can help cities become more efficient in their operations and services and thus more sustainable, with opportunities for a greater quality of life and well-being of city dwellers of all generations, levels of ability and backgrounds. Focusing on three realms of urban life - housing, green and public spaces, and transport - this brief draws attention to the importance of ensuring that the needs of older persons are taken into account when planning, designing and implementing sustainable development plans at the local level. It addresses the question of how policy-makers, business and civil society actors, citizens, young and old, can design age-friendly sustainable urban environments with the help of new technologies that meet the needs of all generations, overcome the digital divide, foster inter-generational solidarity and ensure that older people are not left behind in sustainable and smart cities for all ages.
Gender Equality in Ageing Societies
Faced with population ageing, countries in the UNECE region are preparing for growing numbers of older persons receiving pensions and needing health and long-term care services. An important societal adaptation to ageing has been to increase the labour market participation among women and older persons to ensure the sustainability of social security and protection systems. It is now time that regulatory frameworks, financial provisions and services support the equal sharing of paid and unpaid work in families, households and communities between women and men to close prevailing gender gaps in care, employment, earnings and pensions. Unless gender- and age- responsive reforms are addressing the multiple dimensions of gender inequality in ageing societies, women risk to be disproportionately disadvantaged by the consequences of population ageing, facing double and triple shifts of paid, domestic and care work at the detriment of their own health, earnings and savings which can accumulate to a greater risk of poverty, social isolation and unmet care needs in their own advanced age.
Assets for Alimentation?
A recent strand of aid programming aims to develop household assets by removing the stresses associated with meeting basic nutritional needs. In this paper, we posit that such programmes can also boost nutrition in recipient households by encouraging further investment in diet. To test this hypothesis, we study the World Food Programme’s “Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO)” in Niger, a conflict-affected, low income country with a high share of malnourishment. Under PRRO, a household could be in one of three groups at endline: receiving food aid to prevent malnutrition, receiving both preventive food aid and food for assets assistance, or receiving no assistance (the control group). When provided only by itself, the food aid has no nutritional impact, relative to receiving no assistance. However, we observe pronounced positive effects when preventive food aid is paired with assets-based programming, over and above what stems from greater household assets. We conclude, first, that certain forms of food aid function well in complex, insecure environments; second, that assets-based programmes deliver positive nutritional spillovers; and, third, that there are theoretical grounds to believe that asset-based programmes interact positively with more nutrition-focused programming.
School Feeding or General Food Distribution?
We rely on a unique pre-crisis baseline and five-year follow-up to investigate the effects of emergency school feeding and general food distribution (GFD) on children’s schooling during conflict in Mali. We estimate programme impact on child enrolment, absenteeism and attainment by combining difference in differences with propensity score matching. School feeding led to increases in enrolment by 11 percentage points and to about an additional half-year of completed schooling. Attendance among boys residing in households receiving GFD, however, declined by about 20 per cent over the comparison group. Disaggregating by conflict intensity showed that receipt of any programme led to rises in enrolment mostly in high-intensity conflict areas and that the negative effects of GFD on attendance were also concentrated in the most affected areas. Conversely, school feeding mostly raised attainment among children residing in areas not in the immediate vicinity of the conflict. Programme receipt triggered adjustments in child labour. Thus, school feeding led to lower participation and time spent in work among girls, while GFD raised children’s labour, particularly among boys. The educational implications of food assistance should be considered in planning humanitarian responses to bridge the gap between emergency assistance and development by promoting children’s education.
The Impact of COVID-19 on Older Persons
The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is causing untold fear and suffering for older people across the world. As of 26 April, the virus itself has already taken the lives of some 193,710 people, and fatality rates for those over 80 years of age are five times the global average. As the virus spreads rapidly to developing countries, likely overwhelming health and social protection systems, the mortality rate for older persons could climb even higher. This policy brief elaborates on the impacts and identifies both immediate and longer-term policy and programmatic responses needed across key priorities for action. The e-book for this policy brief has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.