POVERTY IN BARBADOS The death of 37 year old Nicole Harrison-Watson remains top of the mind for many Barbadians a couple days after she was found murdered at her Ferniehurst, Black Rock, St. Michael home. While it does no good to speculate about what motivated her assailant (a suspect is being questioned by police), it affords the living the opportunity to critically and dispassionately analyse the poor conditions which many Barbedians live under in Barbados and in particular our young women. The bigger point is that there is bound to be a positive correlation in the lack of social cohesion and crime in many of these depressed neighbourhoods like Deacons and the Pine and the declining economic condition. It is no secret that Deacon is overridden with drug lords whose strangehold on the women especially is born out of the over crowding, lack of opportunity, under employment, hunger, lack of education voluminously articulated in the Barbados Country Assessment of Living Conditions Report. How many women existing below the poverty line are abused, rape, beaten because of the infestation of a drug culturein these developments which make those with money (usually men) the bankers in community? In a negative enviornment accepting the findings in the CALC report what happens to families if the women are victims? Without the women how will the family survive? Of course some will get a lifeline but many will be sucked into a black hole of poverty and their generations to follow. We have to do better to protect our women to enable them to fulfill their nuturing role. No society can deem to have progressed if we are not protecting our womenfolk, if we are losing our womenfolk. The Inter-American Development Bank conducted the first study on poverty in Barbados which was published in 1998. This document, Poverty and Income Distribution in Barbados, identified a number of key markers with respect to the study at the time were:--- The poverty Line in Barbados was BDS $ 5,503 per capita per year. Approximately 7000 households existed on income below this threshold. Poverty affected around 13.9% of the population. Over the period 1995 to 2010, Barbados was able to achieve a very high human development status in terms of the UNDPs human development index which combines indicators of health and education status and livelihood. Since 1990, it has been ranked among the top 50 countries in the world. The countrys development strategy has been to facilitate the development of the private sector in the production of goods and services. In general, there was an improvement in the standard and conditions of living over the study period. As a small, open developing country, Barbados is vulnerable to external shocks such as those which occured in 2001 and 2008-09, leading to a restriction in output, increase in unemployment and as a consequence, an increase in transient poverty. CHALLENGES AND POLICY ISSUES While there was improvement in health and education, health status of the population with respect to CNCD s and the quality of the output of the social system, the quantity and quality of housing still pockets of unsatisfactory living conditions among the population. BARBADOS AT A GLANCE 99.7% of the population is literate 26.2% of the total population is umemployed 74 years is the life expectancy 11.63 infant mortality per 1,000 live births 0.35% is the population growth rate
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 06:31:56 +0000
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