| 1. Recent years have seen a succession of
global conferences organized by the United Nations
in the social sphere. Following the World Summit
for Children in 1990, the International Conference
on Population and Development was held in Cairo
in 1994; the World Summit for Social Development
in Copenhagen in March 1995; and the Fourth
World Conference on Women in Beijing in September
1995. More recently, the Second United Nations
Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II)
took place in Istanbul. In several instances,
preparatory conferences were held at the regional
level prior to the global meetings, and regional
strategies and plans of action were also adopted.
2. As might be expected, there were many common
or overlapping areas of social concern that
were dealt with at these conferences. The various
plans of action adopted at the conferences cited
the need for adequate information to help to
develop social policy and to monitor progress
towards achieving goals and targets. The Programme
of Action of the World Summit for Social Development
specifically stated that the United Nations
system's capacity for gathering and analysing
information and developing indicators of social
development should be strengthened, along with
its ability to provide policy and technical
support and advice in order to improve national
capacities. The twenty-eighth session of the
United Nations Statistical Commission in 1995
set up the Expert Group on the Statistical Implications
of Major United Nations Conferences to consider
the programmes of action adopted at the Cairo,
Copenhagen and Beijing summits, agree on a number
of critical policy domains and identify statistical
issues arising from them.
3. The Expert Group, which consisted of individuals
from national statistical offices and international
agencies, including two regional commissions,
met twice in June 1995; ESCAP was unable to
be represented at the meetings but contributed
to the Group's final report via correspondence.
The Expert Group identified five policy themes
of the summits, with corresponding broad areas
of social concern, as follows:
Policy themes Main areas of social
concern
- Population and development
Health
- Material well-being
- Education
- Eradication of poverty
Income and expenditure
- Economic resources
- Expansion of productive
employment Work
- and reduction of unemployment
Working environment
- Education and training
- Social integration Housing
- Work
- Crime and criminal justice
- Status of women and men
Health
- Education
- Work
- Income
4. Bearing in mind the overlapping areas of
social concern and the connections among the
policy themes themselves, the Expert Group conducted
an extensive analytical review and identified
for each theme several statistical indicators,
the statistical and measurement issues involved,
including data sources, and further work. The
Group agreed that priority should be given to
national issues, while also recognizing the
benefits of ensuring as much consistency as
possible between countries. It also felt that
"...priority should be given to ensuring that
each country has the capacity to produce a small
number of indicators crucial to the five policy
themes in order to guide policy development
and decision-making in the country itself".
1 E/CN.3/AC.1/1996/R.4, para. 91. It accordingly
recommended a minimum national social data set
(MNSDS), to be kept small deliberately to improve
its chances of adoption by as many countries
as possible. MNSDS was based on the criteria
of direct relevance to the five policy themes,
accepted international definition and classification,
feasibility of collection and feasibility of
gender disaggregation. The suggested MNSDS comprises
the following 15 items:
- Population estimates by
sex, age and, where appropriate and feasible,
ethnic group;
- Life expectancy at birth,
by sex;
- Infant mortality, by sex;
- Child mortality, by sex;
- Maternal mortality;
- Percentage of infants weighing
less than 2,500 g at birth, by sex;
- Average number of years
of schooling completed, by sex, and where
possible by income class;
- GDP per capita;
- Household income per capita
(level and distribution);
- Monetary value of the basket
of food needed for minimum nutritional requirements;
- Unemployment rate, by sex;
- Employment-population ratio,
by sex, and by formal and informal sector
where appropriate;
- Access to safe water;
- Access to sanitation;
- Number of people per room,
excluding kitchen and bathroom.
All the items are intended to be disaggregated
by urban/rural areas where at least a quarter
of the population is rural; MNSDS is also envisaged
to be of high integrity and reliability, and
to contain reasonably timely data.
5. MNSDS does not include a specific poverty
indicator, since the Copenhagen summit recognized
that each country should define its own poverty
indicators; nor does it include any process
indicators, despite an acknowledgement of their
usefulness for effective programme management
at the national and subnational levels.
6. MNSDS was presented to the Statistical
Commission's Working Group on International
Statistical Programmes and Coordination in April
1996. The Working Group recommended that the
data set should be adopted by the Statistical
Commission at its 1997 session, while taking
note of a proposal that indicator (f) should
be replaced by "Contraceptive prevalence rate".
7. The Statistical Commission's Working Group
also supported the emphasis in the Expert Group's
report on strengthening national social statistics
capacities, particularly in the context of improving
the availability of appropriate statistics and
indicators for monitoring implementation of
the programmes of action adopted at the summit
conferences. The Expert Group had proposed,
in fact, a two-stage process for improving social
statistics capacities: assessment on a regional
basis, followed by national capacity-building
measures coordinated by the regional commissions.
The commissions would utilize common (or very
similar) questionnaires to gather information
from each country on its present social statistics
capacity and data availability, adapt MNSDS
to cater to known common regional features,
and assess the need for assistance for capacity-building,
production, presentation and dissemination of
MNSDS.
8. The ESCAP Commission, at its fifty-second
session in April 1996, generally supported MNSDS.
It felt, however, that the main focus should
be on the means of strengthening national social
statistics and that the regional commissions
had a key role to play in assisting countries
to identify statistical gaps and skill deficiencies
and in developing strategies to bridge those
gaps. The Commission urged donor countries and
organizations to provide financial and other
support to the secretariat to enable it to collect
and exchange information on national capacities
in social statistics and to organize related
technical assistance and training activities.
9. However, despite the fact that the Expert
Group urged the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) and other donors to make special efforts
to release funds from their 1996 programmes
and give the project the highest priority in
following up the World Summit for Social Development,
it appears that attempts to secure funding for
comprehensive capacity assessment measures have
not been successful. 2 In the case of UNDP,
at least, the sixth intercountry programme (in
principle for the period 1996-2000, but in practice
to commence new disbursements in 1997) is still
in the advanced formulation stage. Instead,
the Statistical Commission's Working Group requested
the United Nations Statistics Division to work
with the regional commissions to arrange for
pilot studies in each region on the availability
and quality of the statistics called for in
MNSDS, and to report on progress to the Chairman
of the Working Group. The United Nations Statistics
Division was also requested to prepare a report
synthesizing the regional results and identifying
reporting mechanisms and approaches which might
be useful in all regions.
10. Some thought has been given at the United
Nations Statistics Division and ESCAP to the
approach that might be taken in the pilot studies.
One possibility is for a two-stage process:
first, to define the minimum data collection
programmes that need to be in place to produce
MNSDS; and second, to examine the actual availability
of the data set in the pilot countries with
the data collection framework as background.
The minimum data collection programmes for MNSDS
would appear to be:
- A population census every
ten years
- A housing census or survey
at least every ten years in rural areas and
every five in urban
- A demographic and health
survey at least every five years
- Civil registration birth
and death statistics, compiled at least annually
- An employment/unemployment
survey at least annually
- A food price survey at
least quarterly
Basic data sources for national accounts 3
The sources required to calculate one of the
indicators, GDP per capita, are not enumerated
here since they are numerous and vary somewhat
among countries. From an assessment standpoint,
the national accounting capacities of the countries
in the region have already been examined in
connection with the implementation of the 1993
SNA.
For each pilot country, any shortfalls from
this minimum programme would be noted, whether
in terms of the absence of one of the data collection
mechanisms altogether, or in terms of deficiencies
in coverage, methodology, frequency, timeliness
or other aspects affecting data quality.
11. At the second stage of this possible scenario
for the pilot studies, actual data availability
in terms of MNSDS might be examined. Some data
gaps may be directly attributable to the lack
of the appropriate data collection mechanism,
while others may exist even with the data collection
programmes in place; in other words, the minimum
data collection programmes are a necessary but
not sufficient condition for the availability
of MNSDS. To take one example, the existence
of a food price survey does not guarantee that
a country will be able to produce indicator
(j), the monetary value of the basket of food
needed for minimum nutritional requirements;
this also requires the availability of nutritional
expertise at the national level. Many of the
indicators require input from more than one
data collection mechanism and are also dependent
on expertise in specialized fields such as demography
or health. There are numerous circumstances
where shortfalls in trained staff, inadequate
capacities to adapt methodologies to national
circumstances, lack of analytical skills, deficiencies
in data processing capabilities, and so on,
could lead to data for MNSDS being unavailable,
incomplete or inadequate, even with a suitable
data collection framework in place. The pilot
studies might aim to analyse these circumstances
in detail.
12. A further possible extension of the pilot
studies could be to work intensively in a small
subset of the countries concerned in order to
demonstrate the feasibility of compiling the
minimum data set. This would amount to a demonstration
project on the implementation of MNSDS, from
which lessons could be learned to facilitate
the establishment and maintenance of the data
set in other countries.
13. At the time of writing, the Government
of Denmark has been approached to finance five
pilot studies, probably one in each region.
The secretariat will report to the Committee
on any subsequent developments in acquiring
funding and on any views that the potential
donor may have on the choice of pilot countries.
14. The Committee is invited to give its views
on the statistical implications of the global
social conferences, and in particular on the
work of the Expert Group and the attempts to
date to follow through via pilot studies. Bearing
in mind the ESCAP Commission's support for MNSDS
while emphasizing the means of strengthening
national social statistics, the Committee is
requested to advise the secretariat on how best
to proceed in assisting countries of the region
to monitor progress towards the achievement
of the goals agreed on in the global conferences.
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