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Haiti Welfare
In the 1980s, public assistance continued to be
limited. The
government provided pensions to some retired public
officials and
military officers, but it did not guarantee them to civil
servants. A social-insurance system for employees of
industrial,
commercial, and agricultural firms provided pensions at
age
fifty-five, after twenty years of service, and
compensation for
total incapacity, after fifteen years of service. A system
of
work-injury benefits also covered private and public
employees,
providing partial or total disability compensation. These
programs were administered by the Ministry of Social
Affairs. In
general, however, the dearth of social programs offered by
the
government forced most Haitians to rely mainly on their
families
and on the services provided by nongovernmental
organizations. As
has been true in so many other areas of life, Haitians
have
cultivated self-reliance in the face of hardship,
scarcity, and
the inadequacy of existing institutions.
***
Among works on Haitian society in English, James G.
Leyburn's
The Haitian People continues to be a useful
overview. The
introduction, by Sidney Mintz, to the second edition is
one of
the most lucid analyses of the Duvalier regimes. Another
classic
is Melville J. Herskovits's ethnography, Life in a
Haitian
Valley, detailing the life of peasants and townspeople
in the
1930s. More recent analyses of Haitian society and
economics
include Mats Lundahls's Peasants and Poverty: A Study
of
Haiti, which views Haitian economic decline in terms
of
overpopulation, environmental degradation, and
governmental
passivity over the course of Haiti's history. A
contrasting
analysis can be found in Alex Dupuy's Haiti in the
World
Economy: Class, Race, and Underdevelopment Since 1970,
which
examines the country's social and economic problems
primarily in
terms of Haiti's relations with foreign powers.
The volume of essays edited by Charles R. Foster and
Albert
Valdman, Haiti--Today and Tomorrow: An
Interdisciplinary
Study, provides a useful discussion of many aspects of
Haitian society in the 1980s, including issues of
language,
education, religion, cultural orientation, male-female
relationships, migration, and the economy. Simon Fass's
Political Economy in Haiti: The Drama of Survival
is the
first detailed examination of the urban lower class. The
work of
David Nicholls, especially his From Dessalines to
Duvalier:
Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti,
provides an
analysis of political and social ideologies through the
course of
Haitian history. For an overview of Haitian immigrants in
the
United States, the chapter on Haitians in David W.
Haines's
Refugees in the United States: A Reference Handbook
is
helpful. (For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1989
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