Land Tenure, Income, and Employment in Rural Haiti: A Survey

Excerpts from the report Introduction: Development planners and policymakers must be concerned not only with a country's level of GNP, but also with its distribution. Moreover, other indicators of well-being need to be examined, since GNP is widely recognized to be a most Imperfect measure of welfare. Closely related to the issues of levels of living and income distribution are those of employment and, in rural areas, land tenure. In Haiti, much of the information on these subjects comes from the censuses of 1950 and 1971, and this paper will begin with some brief general remarks about the census data. (Additional comments will be made as specific types of data are discussed in subsequent sections). We will then turn to the subject of land tenure arrangements and the distribution of landholdings among Haitian farmers. Next, we will examine the data on per capita income and other level-of-living indicators, and review what little information is available on income distribution. Employment and labor force data will be reviewed, together with information on wages rates and on internal and external migration. Government policies regarding land tenure, rural income, and employment will be examined, and suggestions will be made for future research on these issues.