The 2010 earthquake in Haiti has exposed the extreme vulnerability of a society where the state and the economy simultaneously fail to deliver. The Dominican Republic has witnessed several phases of rapid economic growth since the 1870s and, from the 1970s onwards, a sustained process of political emancipation.
Bad governance and corrupt politics have left millions of people disenfranchised. In spite of an oppressive and undemocratic state, poor Haitians have created their own informal groups, cooperatives and caisses populaires (credit union) movements – a testimony to the democratic spirit of the poor masses. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
This paper studies the relationship between poverty and occupational choice in Haiti, focusing on the hypothesis that the lack of job opportunity could be a cause of the severe and persistent poverty. An empirical analysis on occupational choice was conducted using a multinominal logit model.