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Haiti Urban Lower Class
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Residential street, Port-au-Prince
Children, Port-au-Prince
Courtesy United States Agency for International Development
The urban lower class, which made up about 15 percent
of the
total population in the early 1980s, was concentrated in
Port-au-
Prince and the major coastal towns. Increased migration
from
rural areas contributed greatly to the growth of this
class.
Industrial growth was insufficient, however, to absorb the
labor
surplus produced by the burgeoning urbanization;
unemployment and
underemployment were severe in urban areas. The urban
lower class
was socially heterogeneous, and it had little class
consciousness. One outstanding characteristic of this
group was
its commitment to education. Despite economic hardships,
urban
lower-class parents made a real effort to keep their
children in
school throughout the primary curriculum. Through
education and
political participation, some members of the lower class
achieved
mobility into the middle class.
The poorest strata of the urban lower class lived under
Haiti's worst sanitary and health conditions. According to
the
World Bank (see Glossary),
one-third of the population of
Portau -Prince lived in densities of more than 1,000 people per
hectare in 1976. The poorest families consumed as few as
seven
liters of water per person, per day, for cooking,
drinking, and
cleaning, and they spent about one-fifth of their income
to
obtain it. For many of these families, income and living
conditions worsened in the 1980s.
Data as of December 1989
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