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El Salvador Health, Education, and Entitlements
Historically, El Salvador's health care system has fallen
short of the country's needs
(see Health and Welfare
, ch. 2). The
government's ability to provide adequate health care eroded
during the 1980s because of the civil conflict's costliness and
guerrilla attacks that destroyed many previously existing
facilities. Spending on health care, as well as other social
services, was supplanted by increases in military spending.
Consequently, government spending on health services declined as
a share of total expenditures from 10 percent in 1978 to 7.5
percent in 1986.
Nevertheless, compared with its performance earlier in the
decade, health care improved in the mid-1980s, largely because of
AID efforts. With AID assistance, the Salvadoran government
circumvented drastic reductions in social services--despite cuts
to these services in the fiscal budget--and progressed in a
number of areas. Between 1984 and 1986, malaria cases declined
from 62,000 to 23,500; officials from the Ministry of Public
Health and Social Services were able to make 914 prenatal visits
per 1,000 births in 1986, compared with 876 in 1984; health
officials also increased distribution of oral rehydration packets
(vital to reducing infant mortality) by 130 percent, from 650,000
in 1984 to 1.5 million in 1986.
Education's share of government expenditures declined, a side
effect of the civil conflict, from 21.4 percent in 1976 to 14.5
percent in 1986. As a result, by 1986 over 1,000 schools had been
abandoned.
Government spending on social security and welfare increased
from US$11 million in 1976 to US$31 million in 1985, an increase
in line with that for total government spending. Spending on
housing and amenities, however, declined in nominal terms, from
US$11 million in 1976 to US$6 million in 1985. This category
included spending on sanitary services, which declined from
US$800,000 in 1976 to US$200,000 in 1985, after dropping to a low
of US$100,000 between 1979 and 1981.
Data as of November 1988
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