LATIN AMERICA:
'I'll Have to Work Till I Die'

Gustavo González


SANTIAGO, (IPS) - ''I'll just have to work till I die. I have no other option,'' says Miguel González, 73, in Chile, just one of the large proportion of elderly in Latin America who are not covered by the social security system.

Only two out of five senior citizens in Latin America receive social security pensions in urban areas, and one out of five in rural areas, according to a report by José Miguel Guzmán, in charge of population and development issues in the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

That forces many elderly to continue working beyond the age at which their counterparts in developed nations are able to retire, states the study by the regional United Nations agency based in the Chilean capital.

Don Miguel, as his customers respectfully and affectionately refer to him, knows he will have no other choice but to keep working in his small grocery shop in Santiago.

González said he worked all his life as a shop assistant, without any formal employment contract, which would have brought him labour benefits like a pension.

''I never paid into an AFP (one of Chile's private pension funds), either. It never occurred to me. It's just that you don't know about these things,'' he told IPS.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, half of the population over the age of 60 have no income of their own, according to the ECLAC study, which says that being old in this region is virtually synonymous with being poor, since old age occurs in a context of great poverty, persistent social inequality and low social security coverage.

Neglect of the elderly is a serious problem, in terms of social, health and economic policy, in a region whose demographic profile is changing fast.

Today, there are 41 million elderly persons, less than eight percent of the total regional population of nearly 550 million. But that proportion will rise threefold between 2000 and 2050, when senior citizens will account for 25 percent of all people in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In 25 years, the elderly will number 98 million, and in 2050, 184 million. By then, there will be more elderly persons than children in the region, states the ECLAC report.

The aging of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean is a result of the increase in life expectancy, lower birth rates, and the growing numbers of young people who are going abroad in search of better opportunities.

Governments are aware of the challenges they face in this area, but what prevails now is a lack of initiatives, since less than two percent of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean include specific targets and goals for the elderly in their health plans.

''In our societies, a negative image predominates, which associates old age with passivity, illness, deterioration, being a burden, and social breakdown'' -- a worrisome stereotype, warns the ECLAC report, because it can lead to exclusion and isolation of the elderly.

That exclusion can also give rise to ''the invisibility of the elderly at the level of public policies, research, and academia.''

During the 1990s, demand for employment increased among people over 60 due to the lack, or tiny size, of pensions, and to the need to help support their families, whose incomes had shrunk due to economic crises in many countries.

ECLAC reports that the elderly have largely found low-quality employment in the informal economy, earning less than people aged 50 to 59 working in the same jobs.

Sonia Blanco, 63, who retired three years ago from her job as a librarian in Chile, draws a pension equivalent to just 160 dollars a month. The pension of her husband, a retired high school teacher, is also small.

''Our pensions don't stretch very far at all. If it weren't for the help of our children, who knows where we would be living,'' Blanco commented to IPS.

Between 40 and 65 percent of older adults in the region live with their children, according to SABE, a cross-national survey on health and aging carried out in a number of Latin American and Caribbean cities, whose sponsors include the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO).

The survey found the highest proportions of elderly living with their families in Mexico City, Santiago, and Havana, and the lowest in Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados.

The poll also found that a majority of older adults live with spouses or partners.

Among the elderly, between 70 and 85 percent of men and 55 to 60 percent of women say they are married or living with a partner. The difference in proportions is due to the fact that widows outnumber widowers -- a result of the higher life expectancy of women -- and because men tend to seek out new partners after they are widowed, separated or divorced.

The proportion of older adults who live completely alone is relatively low in Latin America, ranging from five to 16 percent -- which not only attests to the strength of family ties in a largely Roman Catholic region, but also to the fact that few elderly have a large enough income to survive on their own, even after a lifetime of work.