Life in Haiti

Facts About Haiti

Location: just east of Cuba, south of Florida. Shares an island with the Dominican Republic.

Click here for a map of Haiti.

Size: 27,750 sq km (about the size of Maryland)
Population: about 9 million
Capital city: Port-au-Prince

Government: parliamentary republic (technically), the previous president was ousted in a coup. The current president, Rene Preval, was elected in 2006 after elections were put off numerous times.

Language: French, Haitian Creole

Literacy rate: 52.9%
The enrollment rate for primary school is 67%, and fewer than 30% reach 6th grade

Doctor to patient ratio: 1 to 1,250. Many of these doctors are in the cities, in rural areas it is 1 to 4,000 or more.
Only 40% of the population has access to basic health care
Ninety percent of Haiti’s children suffer from waterborne diseases and intestinal parasites
Infant mortality: 59.69 deaths/1,000 live births (6.22 in US)

Income: $1300 GDP per capita, but the Gross National Income (GNI) per capita is only $660.

Unemployment rate: over 67%

Life expectancy: 60.78 years

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. 80% of its people are under the poverty line. 54% of the people are in abject poverty. Only 16% of rural Haiti has adequate sanitation and less than 1/3 have safe drinking water.

There are somewhere between 180,000 – 300,000 child domestic servants in Haiti, slaves.

Houses in Haiti are very small. This one room, dirt floor house is typical. Usually large families will live in a house this size. This one also happens to be newly built.

Political problems are common in Haiti

. Tire burnings such as this one happen often. These burnings usually block off the only street available. This one blocked off the western 1/4 of the country for a few days during one of our trips. The United Nations Peacekeeping Mission has been in Haiti since 2004.