City Life vs. Country Life

            Life in rural areas differs greatly from city life in the Dominican Republic, in ways that are difficult to define empirically.  One of the most common metrics of quality of life is the poverty rate, a statistic which is based on average daily income.

 (Data from the United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 2010.)

This statistic assumes that a person who earns less than two US dollars a day is poor, and a person who earns less than two dollars a day is extremely poor.  Poverty statistics do not however account for non-monetary factors.  For example, many agricultural families grow some portion of their own food, which they do not have to pay for.

The rural areas of the Dominican Republic also lag behind the urban areas in terms of basic utilities.

(Data from the United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 2010.)

Like the poverty statistics, however, these figures do not draw a complete picture.  Even in the nation’s largest cities, the piped water is not potable, and thus doe not confer as much advantage as might be assumed.  The prevalence of electricity is surprisingly high throughout the country, although it should be noted that, whether the electricity comes from a rural hydroelectric facility or the national grid, blackouts are not infrequent in the Dominican Republic.  Also, many households in the Dominican Republic obtain electricity illegally, without contract or payment, which makes this statistic particularly difficult to determine.  The prevalence of sewage systems is very low nationwide, and practically unheard of in rural areas.  However, the condition of sanitation is almost certainly better in rural areas than in cities, because rural areas have better alternatives to sewage systems.  Many rural homes have outhouses, and the population density of these areas is low enough that the accumulation of human waste is much less of a concern than in urban areas.  In cities, on the other hand, most households without sewage systems drain into turgid ditches or directly into waterways.  Such inadequate sanitation, coupled with high population density, dramatically increases the risk of communicable waterborne diseases, including typhoid, cholera, and hepatitis A.

~Alexa