How to verify Privilege Separation is working?

Hi -

Is there a simple way to positively demonstrate that privilege
separation is working? Running ps -fe shows all sshd processes running
as root. If /var/empty doesn't exist, sshd still seems to work, but
presumably without privilege separation. There may be other
configuration errors which could have the same effect.

(The reason I ask is that a vulnerability assessment has shown that I
need to upgrade to OpenSSH 3.7.1 to avoid known vulnerabilities.
However, rebuilding from source has run into problems with
incompatible libraries since we're on an old version of AIX. No doubt
these are fixable, given time my management may not allow me, but if I
could positively demonstrate that privilege separation is working, I
could argue that the risk is low and limited to DoS. Agreed?)

- Philip