Abstract
Unemployment is today considered perhaps the most serious of the problems afflicting less developed countries and one that is believed to be steadily worsening as the gap between the rapidly rising numbers pressing for work and new employment opportunities being created widens1. Yet surveys conducted in recent years in these countries do not indicate levels of unemployment much higher than found in many developed countries today or any perceptible trend towards significant increases2. Even in the urban areas, where such unemployment is regarded to be most serious, very high rates are not reported3.
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Growing concern for the employment situation in less developed countries has characterised recent policy statements by the United Nations and its specialised agencies, including the fao, the World Bank, and the ilo. In response to what it regards as a growing threat, the ilo in 1969 launched its World Employment Programme aimed at accelerating the rate of employment-creation, and within this context in 1970 carried out the first of a number of planned country missions (to Colombia) for developing comprehensive strategies to overcome the employment problem in less developed countries. A similar concern with the unemployment problem was expressed by the Pearson Commission in its report, Partners in Development, which termed the problem ‘urgent’. Both the World Bank and the oecd Development Centre are devoting considerable research effort during the Second Development Decade to analysis of unemployment in ldcs, reflecting the rising concern with the problem.
For instance, unemployment (excluding the seasonally unemployed) as a percentage of the economically-active population in Iran in November 1966 was only 3–7 per cent, according to the census of that date, as compared with 2–6 per cent in the census of November 1956. Annual surveys of unemployment in the United Arab Republic, Korea, Philippines, and Taiwan during the 1960s show rates varying from 1–5 to 8–4 per cent only, with no trend towards increase. See David Turnham. The Employment Problem in Less Developed Countries: A Review of Evidence’, Unpublished-Roneo oecd Development Centre, Paris, June 1970, p. 56.
Iranian urban unemployment as reported by censuses increased only slightly between 1956 and 1966, or from 4–5 per cent to 4–9 per cent. Rates for the urban areas of Chile in 1968, Panama in 1963–4, Venezuela in 1969, Ceylon in 1968, India in 1961–2, Malaya in 1965, and Philippines in 1965, were 6, 10–4, 7–9, 15–0, 3–2, 9–8, and 11–6 per cent, respectively. See Turnham. Op. cit., pp. 58–60.
In his recent study of conditions in southeast Asia, Asian Drama, London 1968, Gunnar Myrdal is also highly critical of the use of Western definitions and concepts of unemployment in less developed countries. See pp. 1020, 1024–5. Similarly, the oecd regards the concept of unemployment used in industrial countries as ‘inappropriate’ for most ldcs. See oecd. Development Assistance: 1970 Review, Paris December 1970, p. 117.
A situation noted, among others, by Myrdal. Op. cit., pp. 1020 and 1120; Jan L. Sadie. ‘Labor Supply and Employment in Less Developed Countries,’ The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 1967, pp. 127–8; and International Labour Office. Employment and Economic Growth, Geneva 1964, p. 124.
Of 944 employed men in two of the slum communities subsequently razed (Behjatabad and Salsabil), 84–5 per cent were reported by surveys of the Ministry of Development and Housing in 1965 as earning 100 rials ($1–33) or less a day when minimum needs for food alone in that year for a family of four in Tehran were estimated at 137 rials ($1–83) by a Ministry of Labour investigation. The supplementary earnings of the considerable number of wives and children in the two communities who were also working (396 persons) may be assumed to have brought family incomes up to a subsistence level.
All figures for Tehran City and its District 7 quoted in this article derive from data in Plan Organisation, Iranian Statistical Centre, National Census of Population and Housing, November 1966, Volume 10, Tehran Shahrestan, Tehran, August 1967.
The writer is currently engaged in a study of the relationship between head of household income and labour force participation rates in less developed countries, using data for the urban areas of Iran. In Ku-ye 9 Aban, the 1967 survey also showed that 4–6 per cent of boys under the age of 10 were economically active, a real poverty indicator.
For instance, the Ku-ye 9 Aban day maid employed by the writer’s Iranian parents-in-law asked them to lend her 1000 rials ($13–33) so that her unemployed husband could buy a stock of watermelons and start a street sales business.
About half of the wage employed males in the two slum districts surveyed in 1965 (see Note 6) were construction workers, typically subject to day-to-day employment and discharge on completion of the work assignment.
See, for instance, the views of the ilo on this subject in United Nations. Handbook of Household Surveys, Studies in Methods, Series F, No. 10, New York 1964, p. 83. Useful guidelines in determining whether a respondent should be classified unemployed or not are also included in this Handbook, p. 77.
For an example of how such data might be shown in tabular form, see William H. Bartsch and Lothar E. Richter. ‘An Outline of Rural Manpower Assessment and Planning in Developing Countries,’ International Labour Review, 103, No. 1, January 1971, Table 1, p. 74.
Indeed, the Indian Government has already initiated action along these lines, setting up recently a Committee of Experts on Unemployment Estimates, reporting to its Planning Commission, charged with making recommendations for improving the methodology currently in use for surveying unemployment.
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© 1974 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Bartsch, W.H. (1974). Unemployment in Less Developed Countries: A Case Study of a Poor District of Tehran. In: Dwyer, D.J. (eds) The City in the Third World. The Geographical Readings series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86177-4_10
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