WINDHOEK – Access to basic social services, such as education, health care, water supply, sanitation and public safety are possible at the early stages of a country’s development, according to the recently published Human Development Report 2014.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report says its findings emerge from a three-stylised study in selected countries that adopted the principles of universalism.
Universalism is an ideal or principle that pertains to the redistribution of resources, especially basic welfare services in society.
The study was done in countries that adopted universalism before they became industrialised or affluent and were taken up under a range of political systems from autocracies to highly functional democracies.
Countries like Costa Rica, Denmark, Korea, Norway and Sweden all took provision of basic social services while at a relatively low income per capita, but the gains started to accrue long before coverage became universal.
For example, Costa Rica adopted comprehensive measures on education investments, public health and social security in 1949, while Sweden and Denmark enacted sickness insurance laws, way back in 1891 and 1892, respectively.
Norway enacted a mandatory Workers Compensation Law in 1894, while Korea made large gains in education by the early 1960s.
Today, Denmark, Norway and Sweden rank among the top fifteen countries with very high human development indicators, together with Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, United States, Germany, New Zealand, Canada and Singapore.
The report emphasises the importance of social spending as a catalyst for poverty reduction in the population as a whole and among sub-groups.
“With a poverty line at 50 percent of median equivalent income, the Nordic countries reduced poverty by 80-90 percent among families with children through redistribution in the mid-1990s,” stated the report.
Other European countries that also reduced poverty by more than 50 percent among families with children were notably Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.
Universalism can also contribute to economic growth and has proved so in East Asian countries where “rapid gains in education and training enabled countries to leverage the new knowledge-driven global economy.”
The 2014 Human Development Report is the latest in the series of global human development reports published by the UNDP since 1990 as independent, empirically grounded analyses of major development issues, trends and policies.