Good Health and Well-Being

This policy brief presents determinants and risk factors of poor mental health among older persons and provides a detailed overview of the prevalence of mental health disorders among older persons of different socio-demographic characteristics across the region. The policy brief highlights different policy strategies to promote protect and care for the mental health of older persons with examples contributed by Governments and civil society organizations across the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) region. The policy brief also offers a checklist of effective measures to promote and protect the mental health of older persons covered in this brief.

This paper reconstructs the full welfare distributions from household surveys of 160 countries covering 96.5 percent of the global population to estimate the pandemic-induced increases in global poverty and provide information on the potential short-term effects of income-support programmes on mitigating such increases. Crucially the analysis performs a large-scale simulation by combining the welfare distributions with the database of social protection measures of Gentilini et al. (2021) and estimates such effects from 72 actual income-support programmes planned or implemented across 41 countries.

COVID-19 broke out at a time when Latin America was already experiencing significant social unrest fueled to a large extent by growing dissatisfaction with the state of politics and the social contract more broadly. Given this context how has the pandemic impacted citizens’ views of the public sphere and opinions about democratic governance? This brief presents the results of a survey commissioned by UNDP in 10 Latin American countries in September 2020. Self-ascribed social class is used as a lens to explore differences in the perception and evaluation of state performance in the face of COVID-19 with a focus on ‘middle-class’ perspectives. Some considerations are then offered on the steps required to enhance long-term democratic resilience in the region.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a devastating impact on every aspect of life. Facing loss of livelihoods and inadequate safety nets migrant workers in India constitute perhaps the most severely affected cohort of Indians. However the socio-economic impact on these migrant workers has a gendered dimension to it too. A survey of 10161 women migrant workers in India revealed that they were faced with the double burden of earning a livelihood and unpaid care work at home. In addition their incomes fell by more than half during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic levels. Against this backdrop we present the importance of social protection measures for Indian women migrant workers along four dimensions namely: food security cash assistance government health insurance and protection against domestic violence.

Even though microenterprises in Colombia represent approximately 80 percent of the national productive sector accounting for 33 percent of the labor force and approximately 5 percent of the aggregated value the microenterprise segment has many problems in productivity formality and innovation compared to its bigger brothers. This is a paradox of utmost relevance as these structural problems have greatly influenced the COVID-19 impact on microenterprise one of the most affected sectors during the crisis. Taking advantage of a new detailed national microenterprise survey (EMICRON) this document sheds a light on the structural and institutional problems that affect the wellbeing of microenterprises in Colombia and characterizes the junctural impact of the COVID crisis in the sector. This document indicates that the direction of the economic recovery should not only focus on overcoming the crisis but should incorporate long-term and structural policies.

In a post-COVID-19 Iraq it will be impossible to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or an inclusive development trajectory without tackling the multiple dimensions of fragility in the country. The fragility landscape in Iraq is challenging at best with all dimensions scoring on the high end of the scale. There is a strong imperative to work across the humanitarian development and peace (HDP) nexus with UNDP as Fragility Integrator together with all stakeholders to sustainably address priority drivers and their effects on the social contract and ensure no one is left behind. This policy brief provides recommendation of how to create the enabling environment towards a fragility-based post-COVID-19 recovery.

At any age intersecting factors such as poverty disability social isolation and exposure to abuse can increase the risk of vulnerability and weaken resilience in the case of adverse events. The COVID-19 pandemic rising inflation natural disasters and war are examples of adverse events that have disproportionately affected vulnerable persons including many older persons. Often the capacities and vulnerabilities of older persons remain invisible as their voices are less heard and their needs less known due to a lack of data and research and their insufficient involvement in decision-making. A key challenge therefore is to inform design and implement comprehensive policies that protect vulnerable older persons from adverse outcomes enhance resilience and allow them to fulfil their full potential in later life. The policy strategies presented in this Policy Brief cover the areas of income and housing health and long-term care prevention of violence abuse and neglect and social participation as well as the importance of adequate data and research and the involvement of older persons in decision-making.

This discussion paper makes the case for investing in free universal childcare services of high quality in order to reduce gender inequality in earnings and employment. It estimates the employment-generating and fiscal effects of investing in free universal childcare in three middle income countries: South Africa Uruguay and Turkey. It calculates the total annual costs of investing in high-quality childcare services that would cover the entire population of children below primary school age using parameters relevant to each national context. Results show that employment rates can be significantly increased especially for women as a result of the combined direct indirect and induced job creation. Although the total annual cost of such investment can go up to 3 to 4 per cent of GDP the net cost can be halved thanks to significant fiscal returns stemming from increased employment and earnings without changing the tax structure itself (rates and bands). Results are compared with those obtained using a similar method for the United Kingdom and show that the reach of a country’s tax system plays an important role in the funding process. The paper also estimates a theoretical fiscal break-even point based on longitudinal labour supply effects of mothers closing their lifetime employment and earning gap following such generous childcare offer. In all three countries and the United Kingdom the fiscal return on investment based on this measure is likely to outstrip the total cost of childcare for a typical mother of two children on average earnings.

Building on data from the Europe and Central Asia and Asia-Pacific regions this brief argues that the time to invest in the care economy is now. Such investment helps advance multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by increasing women’s labour force participation and productivity professionalizing the care sector and generating decent work for men and women reducing gender inequalities in care work and ultimately ensuring inclusive and resilient growth. The paper offers recommendations based on emerging research and new policy tools for strengthening public policies and workplace measures to recognize and redistribute unpaid care work and build a care economy as a cornerstone of social and economic recovery.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the working methods of public institutions. The urgency to respond in real time loosened institutional constraints and forced public agencies to be more agile and to experiment with alternative ways to operate accelerating innovation. Beyond the implementation of buffer measures to maintain essential public services the crisis provided opportunities for transformations in public administration that would have been challenging to pursue in “normal” times. Although this urgency presented risks of weakening the checks and balances essential for accountability it also led to the discovery of more efficient and effective ways to deliver public services and many of these may become the “new normal”. Nevertheless it is not clear that the agile decision-making experimentation and innovation observed during the pandemic will persist. This raises the question of how to foster innovation in public institutions in the absence of crises. To retain public trust governments must demonstrate they can effectively handle systemic shocks; they must demonstrate capacity to foresee problems and address them proactively before they become crises. Governments can tap into the innovations developed during the pandemic to better serve their constituents and accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.