Viewpoint
The recently published Human Development Report 1997 states that among the world's more than one billion poor people, many are illiterate, need safe water, reasonable nutrition and health services, and their lives are brief. The theme of the report is human development to eradicate poverty within the first decades of the 21st century. The publication of the Fiji Poverty Report has encouraged the authors of this column to address the issue of population and poverty in the context of the Pacific Islands.
Absolute poverty is often seen as a condition of failure to meet the barest essentials of physical existence, which means being unable either to produce sufficient food or to have remunerative work or income in order to purchase enough for oneself and one's family. For the overwhelming majority of people in the countries of the Pacific, poverty, using this definition, has not yet emerged as a major problem. However, if the definition is expanded to take account of a shortfall in a wider range of 'basic needs', including adequate food and a balanced diet, water and sanitation, clothing and housing, and access to public transport, good health and education, the situation in the Pacific may not look so healthy.
Absolute or relative poverty
One of the issues that complicates the measure of poverty is that there is no general agreement about whether poverty should be considered as absolute or relative in nature. The idea that poverty is absolute and depends on access to a fixed range of goods and services to satisfy basic needs is, however, recognised as being very unrealistic. There is always a relative component in any definition of poverty, that relates the circumstances of the least well off to the general. The notion of poverty to be adopted must be set in the context of a particular social and economic structure. Therefore, it is necessary to conceptualise poverty and identify specific groups of poor in the countries of the Pacific.
At the micro-level it is important for policy purposes to analyse those sub-groups of house-holders within surveyed communities which suffer the greatest relative deprivations, in order to identify their demographic and economic features, and to design anti-poverty and pro-development measures. They, and other groups like them, could then become the focus of development efforts and relief assistance from the governments, or from aid- agency projects. Given the subsistence and agricultural nature of most countries in the Pacific, it seems likely that those households falling in the bottom 20 per cent of the distribution of income and asset holdings - including land, food production, and access to various social services - are vulnerable to falling into relative poverty. This is particularly true of the rapidly growing number of urban households, without access to enough land for growing subsistence crops, without access to a wage job in the formal labour market, and who hav! ! e be en cut off from their local communities.
By most standards, the Pacific island countries might be regarded as being well developed in that they are generally peaceful, politically independent and have social structures which are highly effective in meeting the basic needs of their populations. Pacific islanders have long been highly mobile, between the outer islands and the capital towns or cities, and between their own countries and the more developed countries of the Pacific-rim. Fundamental to this system of movement is a society where the extended family and the local community are the primary units of social reference. "Subsistence affluence" in the agrarian based village economy, together with strong community affiliations, has ensured that absolute poverty and deprivation, as found in other parts of the world, are almost unknown. The commitment to the extended family is demonstrated and maintained by substantial remittance flows from those members who have left for employment in nearby urban areas or ove! ! rseas.Not all is well
Long time harmonious social conditions, however, are under threat as the traditional social fabric is challenged by modernising influences of formal education, improvedcommunications systems and visiting or returning family members based overseas. The political dominance of traditional chiefs and elders is under challenge by democratising activists; women's movements have grown to press for an improvement in the status of women and a reduction in overt discrimination; and the growing numbers of educated youth are challenging traditional authority in the home and community. The confrontation between the traditional and the modern are found particularly in the new and growing urban centres, where problems arise in the spreading shanty towns and concomitant increasing crime rates, the opening of women's crisis centres to deal more transparently with domestic violence inflicted on wives; the rising incidence of teen pregnancies, as in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Marshall Islands,! ! as young unmarried girls become sexually active at earlier ages; an increasing number of reported STDs and the threat of an AIDS epidemic; a growing incidence of suicide, particularly among the urban youth of Samoa; growing food insecurity in some rural areas as traditional social safety nets are removed; and increasing obesity and associated non-communicable diseases as more sedentary lifestyles are adopted and imported processed foods replace traditional diets.Population dynamics and poverty
Evidently, not all is well in the seemingly tranquil Pacific Island countries. At the risk of oversimplification, many of these emerging social problems are attributable to the complexities between the sub-region's population dynamics and its generally underdeveloped state, giving rise to a general feeling of vulnerability to the threat of increasing poverty and inequalities. As populations grow and pressure on limited land intensifies, the challenges to the traditional systems to provide food and other kinds of support to all in need becomes more difficult. Not surprisingly, there are signs of breakdown in traditional systems of production, distribution and welfare. In matrilineal societies, such as the Marshall Islands, women's traditional claims to their land are being usurped. Throughout the region there are frequent land disputes between rival indigenous claimants, between those who have emigrated and those who have remained behind, as in Polynesia, and between land o! ! wner s and those who have leased their land for modern sector uses, as in Fiji.In many of the Pacific countries the share of the under 15 age group exceeds 35 percent and as this bulge in the population moves into its childbearing years, even if on-going behavioural change continues and the average woman bears fewer children than her mother, there will be many more Pacific islanders by the year 2010 than at present. Even the option of overseas migration as a means of shelving surplus population may be curtailed. The Australian and New Zealand doors may close fast on Samoan and Tongan immigrants and the end of the Compacts of Free Association with the United States may curtail the present migration option of people from Palau, FSM and the Marshall Islands.
As these young populations age, as mortality declines and as fertility rates fall, the Pacific island states may expect a rise in the average age of their populations, with an increasing number of elderly people to care for. In the traditional setting, the extended families and coherence of rural communities were able to provide the physical and social needs of their elderly. But in the crowded urban centres, where for many young people the task of supporting their own immediate nuclear families is becoming increasingly difficult, a growing number of elderly people will be abandoned. Governments so far have largely neglected this vulnerable group, hoping that the 'Pacific way' will find its own solutions; but as the demands for geriatric care and welfare support grow, national policies will need to allocate priority to these areas.Vulnerable economies
The prospects of initiating economic growth and sustainable development to help support social and welfare programmes do not appear promising as the Pacific countries suffer from a lack of natural resources, underdeveloped human resources with poor labour market skills, isolation and inadequate infrastructure.They also suffer to various degrees from an exposure to outside forces beyond their control. This makes them extremely vulnerable to factors affecting their economies and income levels, their ability to export and import, to create employment opportunities for burgeoning numbers of new job seekers and to satisfy the increasing demands being placed on their social sectors, particularly in education and health. Their land and sea resources are also vulnerable to the over-exploitation of their scarce natural endowments by over-zealous, often foreign loggers, mining operators and fishermen. Population pressure, particularly in urban areas, has endangered the fresh water supplies and sanitation facilities and made segments of the population vulnerable to outbreaks of diseases. And since many of the countries of the sub-region remain heavily dependent on foreign aid flows to cover public sector budget and trade deficits, including large differences between levels of domestic saving! ! s and investment, they remain vulnerable to the increasing likelihood of a reduction in this aid support.
In addition, the small but privileged formal sector workforce, largely dominated by the public sector, whose pay and conditions of work far exceed those available to the majority of the labour force, are threatened by economic restructuring and retrenchment of the Government workforce. The trade advantages enjoyed by some island economies which have gained preferential access to developed country markets for some of their products (e.g. garments and sugar from Fiji; automotive wire harnesses from Samoa) are threatened by the move to make the international trading environment more competitive, thus endangering many jobs in the private sector. And, under the pressure of population growth and the lack of buoyancy in the formal job market, the subsistence sector in many of the island countries is extremely vulnerable because of its role as the employer of last resort and the absorber of surplus labour in the economy. Diminishing returns of subsistence output per unit of land an! ! d hu man effort have set in, resulting in rising costs of agricultural output. Marketing infrastructure for surplus farm products remains grossly inadequate in all of the countries. As urban consumers switch away from traditional foods to a lower cost diet of imported canned and processed foods, the incidence of non-communicable diseases has risen dramatically.At the same time, population pressure has reduced the availability of good agricultural land and hastened the adoption of unsustainable farming practices, endangering further the livelihood of future generations of islanders.Threat to quality of life
Meanwhile, with less than dynamic national economies from which to derive tax revenues, and dwindling sources of aid funding, many Governments are finding it extremely difficult to maintain, let alone expand, the quality and quantity of social services. It will be increasingly difficult to improve the quality of social services, especially in health, family planning, and education services under these conditions. This will endanger prospects for further improving the education and health status of women and children, a pre-requisite for inducing declines in the overall natural rates of population growth.While population and development programmes have made commendable progress in the recent past, the road ahead presents new and profound challenges. One great challenge lies in convincing rural couples that it is in their best and their nation's interest to bear fewer children. New and innovative methods are needed to disseminate the population message via the influential traditional leadership and churches who, perhaps, have not been fully utilised in the past.
Demographic processes are also giving rise to a growing underclass in the towns, fuelled by continuing migration from the rural areas and the increasing number of elderly people. Tthe problems presented by rising urbanisation, including inadequate housing, unemployment, increasing inequality and the spread of poverty and disadvantaged groups can be minimised, but will need to be addressed with greater urgency by governments. International agencies, it is hoped, will continue to support policies and programmes which alleviate poverty and deprivation in the Pacific Islands.
William J. House & Laurie Lewis
UNFPA Country Support Team, Suva