The family is universally recognized as a basic unit of society. In spite of the many changes in society that have altered their roles and functions, families continue to provide the natural framework for the emotional and material support essential to the growth and well-being of their members. Additionally, families are a basic social unit of production and consumption and, as such, are at the heart of the economic process. Their needs must be intimately connected with the objectives of economic and social development, as a minimum standard of progress. In short, families are engines of the economic and social development process, and must be accounted for when establishing policies and priorities for economic and social development.

Families around the world are under sustained and tremendous stress. Economic and political transformations in many parts of the globe, disease, war, poverty, famine and other such forces are taxing them, often beyond their ability to cope. Such pressures are clearly not confined to the developing world as seen by the pressures generated in families by unemployment, drugs, crime, and AIDS.

In short, the challenges that families face in the present-day world and the stress that they undergo are numerous, largely depending upon the level of national socio-economic development and diversification, In performing functions vital to the well-being of its members and society, the family has responded to these changes in ways ranging from adaptation without significant dysfunction to total breakdown.

Poverty – In Latin America, South Asia and the Arab States, poverty is reinforced by the very unequal distribution of assets. The squeeze of external debt servicing on the resources available for human development is particularly severe in Latin America. In Africa, almost two-thirds of the people lack access to safe water, and fewer than half the children attend primary school. The problem of absolute poverty is increasingly concentrated in Africa. Even in East and South-East Asia, where overall economic growth has been fast, half the people still lack access to safe water and basic health care. Over 100 million people live below the poverty line in the industrial market economies. If the USSR and Eastern Europe are included, the number is at least 200 million. Worldwide, over one billion people live in absolute poverty.

Nutrition – Some 180 million children suffer from serious malnutrition.

Some Issues

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One of the most noteworthy characteristics of poverty in contemporary society is its occurrence in the midst of widely-disseminated images of opulence and conspicuous consumption, which contrasts poverty with increasingly high expectations and, moreover, sharpen the impression that available material resources are insufficient for forming a family. Poverty affects the formation, structure and functions of families. The proportion of families headed by teenage mothers is growing, apparently as a result of the combination of weaker social control of young women’s sexual behavior, lack of information on pregnancy prevention, etc. With respect to family structure, the stability of family relations is subject to more tensions in poor sectors than in other socio-economic strata, owing to a number of factors. For example, the roles of the various family members often undergo changes that do not conform to the family’s aspirations, but rather to social forces, especially those of the market, over which the poor have little control.

The socialization capacity of families is also directly and indirectly affected by their socio-economic situation. The scarcity of means, the inevitable concentration on problems of daily subsistence, inadequate housing and overcrowding have a direct impact on children’s nutrition, health and emotional and cognitive maturity, and on the family’s capacity to complement the education imparted in the school system or even to keep children in the home, as shown by the phenomenon of street children in many cities of the world.

During the past several decades, numerous families all over the globe have witnessed increasing deterioration in their physical living conditions. The number of families without homes has been on the rise. Today the living conditions of more than a billion people are characterized by the paucity of adequate shelter, absence of clean water, inadequate sanitation and a dearth of proper facilities. The appalling lack of educational and health facilities compounds the situation, severely impairing the quality of life for millions of families and limiting their ability to participate in the development process.

One major force that has contributed to the increasing deterioration of living conditions is rapid urbanization, particularly acute in the developing countries. At least 600 million urban dwellers in developing countries are estimated to live in "life-and-health threatening" situations. Poverty is most visible in the slums and squatters settlements of cities. The face of poverty will become increasingly urban in the twenty-first century.

War and civil strife is also a leading cause of homelessness, especially in Africa. 28 African countries are either producers or recipients of refugees, or both. Seventy-five per cent of the world’s refugees are found in Africa – where armed conflicts, economic deterioration, environmental degradation including flood and drought, systematic human rights abuses and ethnic and religious strife have all contributed to increasing uprootedness among the population. Almost 80 per cent of refugees, internally displaced people and returnees in the continent are women and their children.

The number of homeless is also growing in industrialized countries. The nature of homelessness in industrialized countries is also changing wherein more and more families, mostly women and their children are among the homelessness.

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