countries have yet to conduct household surveys on a regular and frequent basis and it is still difficult to compare the incidence of poverty across countries.
Similarly, an increase in income does not always imply improved human conditions. Data on various aspects of human development are also required. Data on key social indicators, such as, infant mortality, literacy, school enrollment, and access to medical facilities, are available for most countries. The reliability of these data, however, varies greatly with indices often being calculated indirectly from highly partial data and sometimes from extrapolation of earlier estimates. Much remains to be done, and countries are being persuaded to embark on a programme of collecting and maintaining at least a minimum social data set (MSDS).
If growth in aggregate income is accompanied by significant damages to the environment, such as air and water pollution, global warming through emission of carbon dioxide and other obnoxious gases, problems of city crimes and overcrowded urban living conditions from the migratory rural population, the welfare gains from income growth has to be discounted. Information on quantitative aspects of environmental conditions is particularly inadequate due in part to conceptual problems, for example, how to define soil depletion, loss of natural habitat, and air pollution as well as the fact that mechanisms are often simply not in place to measure the raw facts. In several countries, some estimates of depreciation of man-made capital are available, but not on depletion of natural resources such as oils and minerals which are equally important.
Before I move to the final theme of my talk which relates to the training needs of statistical personnel, I would like to briefly touch upon the relevance and importance of reliable statistics relating to one vital aspect of demographic change in society. This concerns the needs of an aging population as fertility declines correspondingly with development and income growth. As the aged will have to be provided for, capturing of relevant data is crucial for estimating the ensuing liability to the government and the likely burden to be borne by the society's younger and future generations. Particularly for Japan, statistical development will have to urgently address this embryonic field.
Human resource development in the form of training of official statisticians has always been the key to sustainable statistical development. University-level
