U.N. Report Highlights Worldwide Disparity : Global affairs: Genuine political participation is rare. Full equality is distant prospect even for U.S., economists say.

Despite sweeping political, economic and social changes around the world, fewer than 10% of people worldwide now participate fully in the institutions and decisions that shape their lives, according to a new report from the United Nations.

Disparities among ethnic, gender and economic groups are stark, even in the United States, which now ranks sixth after Japan, Canada, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden on the Human Development Index that rates standards of living.

But when separated by ethnic groups, U.S. whites rank first in the world, while African-Americans come in 31st, after poor Caribbean nations like Trinidad and Tobago.

Latino Americans come in 35th, after struggling former Soviet satellites like Estonia or Third World countries like South Korea--and just ahead of Chile, Russia and Malta.

“Full equality is a distant prospect in the United States,” the 1993 U.N. Human Development Report says.

The infant mortality rate for blacks, for example, is more than twice as high as that for whites, while per capita income for blacks is $13,378, only 60% of the white income of $22,372. And more than half of black American children are growing up in single-parent homes, almost three times the rate among white Americans.

Yet the report cites the United States not for its inequities but for its successes--and the implications for the rest of the world.

“The United States has a commendable record on human rights and affirmative action. It is an open society, with non-discrimination written into law and a media that keeps pressure on the issue. And there have been tremendous improvements in integration since the 1960s,” Mahbub ul-Haq, Pakistan’s former finance and planning minister and now chief architect of the U.N. Development Program’s annual report, said in an interview.

“But the United States still has grave problems, which only shows how far most other countries have to go.”

Almost every country has at least one and often several underprivileged ethnic groups whose education, political access, economic opportunities and life expectancy fall seriously below the national average, the report says.

The infant mortality rate among Guatemala’s Indians is 20% higher than that of the rest of the population. In South Africa, half the population, mainly blacks, live below the poverty line, while 5% of the population, mostly whites, own 88% of all private property.

Worldwide, “exclusion, rather than inclusion, is the prevailing reality,” Haq said.

But the problem is not limited to minorities. Worldwide, the majority of people are still excluded from full participation in a variety of ways.

More than a billion of the world’s people--or one in every four--still languish in absolute poverty, for example, while the poorest fifth find that the richest fifth enjoy more than 150 times their income.

“For millions of people all over the world, the daily struggle for survival absorbs so much of their time and energy that, even if they live in democratic countries, genuine political participation is, for all practical purposes, a luxury,” according to the report, which was prepared by an independent team of economists for the United Nations.

For the poor, participation in the economic system is often so limited that they can’t break the cycle. In Sri Lanka, for example, the poorest 20% of the population receive less than 5% of national income.

The gap between rich and poor is also widening in several countries. Between 1970 and 1988, real income of the richest 20% of Chile’s population grew by 10%, while income of the poorest 20% fell by 3%, the report says.

Participation in a country’s economic life has also been blocked by the new trend in “jobless growth.” Between 1960 and 1987, the economies in Germany, France and Britain more than doubled, yet their employment rates dropped.

The trend in jobless growth is even more serious in developing countries with high birthrates, which are producing legions of people but decreasing numbers of jobs, thus denying economic participation and creating political powder kegs.

The case of women offers another stark example. Although they form a majority globally, women are vastly underrepresented in political systems, occupying only about 10% of parliamentary seats and fewer than 4% of Cabinet posts, the U.N. report says.

In 1993, only six countries had female heads of government, while women still don’t have the vote in several countries.

The disparities are not just in Third World countries. Japan, which ranks highest of all states in criteria making up the Human Development Index, drops to 17th when the index is adjusted for gender disparity.

In Japan, women hold only 2% of parliamentary seats. On average, Japanese women’s income is a mere 51% of male earnings; only 7% of administrative and managerial jobs go to Japanese women.

Rural populations are another excluded majority. “Despite making up around two-thirds of the (world) population, they receive on average less than a quarter of the education, health, water and sanitation services,” the report says.

In Bangladesh, only 4% of the rural population has access to sanitation facilities, compared to 40% of city residents--in a country with a population that is 84% rural.

“For the vast majority, achieving real participation will require a long and persistent struggle” in all areas, the report says.

“Elections are a necessary, but certainly not a sufficient, condition for democracy. Political participation is not just a casting of votes. It is a way of life.”

The U.N. report also outlines five major steps to reconstruct societies and expand participation--what it calls “five new pillars of a people-centered world order.” They are:

* Shift the focus of security from nations to people, from armament to development.

Changes have already begun. Since 1987, military expenditures worldwide have dropped by $240 billion, while more than 2 million armed forces members have been demobilized since the beginning of the 1990s. Defense industries are expected to cut their work forces by 25% by 1998, the report says.

But much more remains to be done. A freeze in military spending at 1990 levels over the next decade, for example, would release almost $100 billion for basic human development, it says.

* Develop new patterns of national and global governance and decentralize power, giving more authority to local governments.

New forms of government are needed because the nation-state is now too small for big functions and too big for small functions. And governments still restrict power to a centralized elite: Developing states distribute only 10% or less of national spending to local authorities, while many industrial countries give only 25% to regions or towns.

* Focus new international cooperation on human needs rather than on the preferences of states.

The Cold War’s shadow still hovers over aid allocations, as strategic importance remains a more important criterion than income, health or education.

In 1991, for example, more than half of U.S. foreign aid went to only five strategically important nations--Israel, Egypt, Turkey, the Philippines and El Salvador--while many needier countries received a small fraction of assistance.

Worldwide, twice as much bilateral aid still goes to big military spenders as to moderate spenders. In contrast, less than 7% of aid goes for human priority concerns, which should be increased to at least 20%, the report says.

* Reorient markets to serve people rather than people serving markets.

Between 1980 and 1991, almost 7,000 state-controlled enterprises were privatized worldwide. Because the process has already included mistakes, “the need to create people-friendly markets is all the greater now that so many countries have embarked on strategies of economic liberalization,” the report says.

* Develop and invest in new models of development that are people-centered and sustainable environmentally.

“It has long been assumed that pursuing economic growth through increasing output would necessarily increase employment. This clearly has not happened,” the report says.

Overall, the report concedes that its recommendations “call for nothing less than a revolution in our thinking.”