Developing Countries: Overview

In recent decades older persons are beginning to become more concentrated in urban areas and this trend is projected to continue. In developing countries, estimates of elderly people currently living in urban areas ranges from 25 to 30 per cent. This is likely to increase to 40 per cent by the year 2000. (United Nations Department of International Economic and Social Affairs, 1995). The question of concern is that if this trend towards urbanization of countries continues, will it create conflicts amongst generations both in rural and urban areas? Still, the process of urbanization in developing countries seems to have a negative effect on opportunities for employment in rural areas, particularly in traditional trades. For example, if self-employed craftsmen lose their source of income, they tend to experience great difficulty in obtaining another job. Within cities, the employment problems of older persons are particularly severe, often jeopardizing their sole means of subsistence. When older, for the most part untrained, workers find themselves without jobs late in life, they often have no way to sustain themselves and no recourse to other sources of support - neither the traditional extended family nor State-based social welfare systems. The concept of retirement has little meaning in self-employed farming and other small-scale economic activities; older persons in the rural sector of developing countries tend to continue working far longer than in any other sector of the economy. In this context the problem is not one of the opportunities to work, but rather access to sufficient resources to permit withdrawal from the labor force as strength fails.