The Face Of Poverty
- The National Statistics Institute says that in Honduras, a country of 8 million inhabitants, 60% of people live below the poverty line.
- In rural areas, the rate rises to 65.4%.
- Two-thirds of people are malnourished and lack access to safe water, sanitation and education.
- Many parents have difficulty finding jobs and so they don't have enough money for food for their children and themselves.
- Starvation and lack of nutrition is a large concern especially for children.
- There is inadequate health care and often only the wealthy can afford it.
- Houses are often adobes or shacks, often made from cardboard and scraps of metal they can find, and many are without floors
- Hondurans, on average have large families (5 children) and the grandparents usually live with them too.
- Most people cannot afford the basic 1-2 dollars a month it would take to send their children to school. So most children never learn to read or write which limits their potential greatly. They are forced, a very young age to work for their family in order to just survive.
- Many kids live on the streets of Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula because they are fleeing from homes filled with poverty, violence, and alcoholism.They beg, steal, dig through trash, shine shoes or do other jobs in order to survive. Many of them become addicted to toxic yellow glue, which is extremely damaging to the human body. Many Honduran street kids do not make it to their eighteenth birthday.
- There is a lot of violence and crime in Honduras as a result of poverty and desperation.
- Femicide, which is murder of women, is a large problem.
- Honduras now has the highest per capita murder rate in the world and the capital, Tegucigalpa, is plagued by violence, poverty, homelessness and sexual assaults.
The Face of Wealth
- Distribution of wealth is very uneven in Honduras.
- Wealth is largely gain by owning a large area of land, being part of foreign entrepreneurial enterprises, and those in the military are granted many privileges.
- Those who are rich have much better living conditions. They have access to good healthcare and their houses can be very nice.
- Wealthier men sometimes wear large gold chains around their necks.
- Being rich in Honduras can be dangerous. That is why most rich people live in walled or fenced compounds and they all have armed guards on the grounds.
- The picture below shows the house of an middle class Honduran citizen. The second picture shows the home of the richest person in Honduras, a plantation owner, living in San Pedro Sula. The third show the guards that stand outside weathly houses.
Source: http://www.mongabay.com/reference/country_studies/honduras/SOCIETY.html