Tag: poverty

  • A new, excellent primer on poverty

    Rahul-full;init_[1] A friend of mine, Rahul Deodhar, has just put out an excellent primer on poverty. He explains beautifully the concepts that I touched on in one of my early posts "The New Thinking on Poverty." The basic idea is that people move in and out of poverty based on what Rahul calls "Snakes" (pitfalls and bad habits that pull them down) and ladders (good habits and actions that pull them out). Rahul provides clear illustrations of how people can cycle in and out of poverty and the high cost of being poor. It's a free ebook and well worth the read. You can learn more about Rahul through his website: http://www.rahuldeodhar.com/

  • Poverty in the Dominican Republic

    The Dominican Republic is a fascinating country, full of amazing contrasts. On one hand, it is a modern country with good roads, a modern skylineShowimage1php_typeid3imageid105864 (photo Miguel Calzada, Diario Libre). The new Metro train system is almost working and there are an incredible number of modern, luxury hotels and resorts. Yet at the same time, the poverty rate is very high. According to the World Bank’s 2006 poverty report, extreme poverty rose from 8.7% of the population in 2001 to 15.7% in 2004, following the banking scandal (table 1.2, page 17). There are clearly opportunities for work in the Dominican Republic–the same report goes on to state that “the low incomes of the poor are a reflection of their low productivity and do not come from barriers to enter the labor market” (translated from the Spanish version of the executive summary, paragraph 23). So why is poverty so bad?

    There are some easy over simplifications–the education system if very weak in the DR, the large number of low-skilled Haitians keeps wages low, government investments in the rural areas are quite weak, there are serious problems with political cronyism and corruption.

    I would guess that the strong economy since 2004 has improved the situation already, but people still seem to be poorer than they were before the crisis. So what should be done? Is the answer to strengthen the micro-credit work of groups like the Dominican Development Foundation ? Should the focus be more on education like the work being done by Aide et Action and Educa? Would it be possible to measure the impact of the different organizations work against an actual number of poor people?

  • Poverty in Haiti

    One of the biggest questions for ending poverty in the Caribbean is whether or not it could be done in Haiti. I’ve lived in Haiti for six years and have worked with Haiti for twelve. I love the people and love the country and it is constantly breaking my heart. 2008 was a rough year. Although things had started off well, the country fell apart first with the riots in March that led to the collapse of the Alexis government, the debacle over the naming of the new Prime Minister, the four storms that devastated the country, and now the collapse of the school in Petionville. Things continually seem to go wrong for Haiti. Would it be possible to end extreme poverty in Haiti?

    Despite all of these problems, there is some progress being made and a lot of good work is being done. My organization has been working with the rural poor for twenty five years. We’ve helped plant millions of trees, repaired countless kilometers of roads, trained numerous farmers, and helped the government to establish their disaster response strategy (despite the very high level of flooding, the number of deaths this year was dramatically less than in 2004!). There are other great organizations like Fonkoze, CARE, ORE. and World Vision to name just a few.

    The government is also trying hard. We work closely with the national offices for disaster preparedness and for border development as well as with the parliament. There are a lot of people within the government that are trying hard to make the country work.

    Yet the situation in Haiti is not improving. In a talk that Anne Hastings of Fonkoze gave in September, she stated that half of all Haitians live in extreme poverty (the citation comes from a nice presentation that you can download). What would it take to pull these 4.3 million people up to poverty? Given the weak physical and governmental infrastructure, it is possible?

    Conversely, if Haiti is not brought out of extreme poverty, what happens to all the Haitians that continue to flee Haiti in search of a better life? How could extreme poverty be ended in the Dominican Republic when thousands of Haitians continue to move to the DR in search of a better life?

    It seems that one of the challenges of this movement will be to figure out how to balance Haiti’s extremely high needs with the easier challenges of reducing poverty in the rest of the Caribbean. What do you think? How could we do this?