Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0112/01122.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 37KB | 602 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01122}
$Pretitle{254}
$Title{Dominican Republic
Chapter 5A.   Living Conditions}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Thomas E. Weil, Jan Knippers Black, Harold I. Blutstein, Kathryn T. Johnson, David S. McNorris, Frederick P. Munson}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{percent
health
public
housing
reported
santo
urban
population
domingo
national}
$Date{1973}
$Log{Hotel Worker*0112201.scf
}
Country:     Dominican Republic
Book:        Dominican Republic
Author:      Thomas E. Weil, Jan Knippers Black, Harold I. Blutstein, Kathryn T. Johnson, David S. McNorris, Frederick P. Munson
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 5A.   Living Conditions

[See Hotel Worker: Courtesy Embassy of Dominican Republic, Washington DC.]

     The pattern of living conditions in the Dominican Republic differs from
that in a majority of the Latin American countries in the sense that there is
no remaining indigenous population that lives in a fashion significantly
different from that of the population having Hispanic or other external
origins.

     The quality of Dominican living depends principally upon level of income
and, secondarily, urban-rural locality. To some extent it depends also on skin
pigmentation and the social values and other considerations that this
pigmentation entails. In varying degrees, to all social groups the quality of
life is more varied and, for the most part, more rewarding in the capital city
and in the Cibao Valley, where the most prosperous agricultural land and the
old city of Santiago de los Caballeros are located.

     During the long period of the regime of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina,
the dynamic factors that might ordinarily have affected living conditions were
in large measure suppressed. In particular, the movement of people from the
traditional life in the countryside to a new life in town was actively
discouraged.

     After the collapse of the remnants of the regime, in 1962 pent-up urban
migration flooded into the cities, and agencies in socially important fields,
such as welfare, housing, and health, were established or expanded. These
innovative movements were badly dislocated by the 1965 and 1966 civil
disturbances, and during the following years the administrators of social
services, such as welfare, housing, medical care, and environmental
sanitation, found it difficult to keep pace with a combination of rapid
urbanization and one of the fastest population growth rates in Latin America.

Nutrition and Diet

     The average Dominican diet is deficient both in quantitative and
qualitative terms. For the years 1964 and 1965 it was estimated by an
international organization that the average per capita daily food intake was
made up of 2,230 calories, fifty-three grams of protein (including twenty-two
grams of animal origin), and fifty-three grams of fats and oils. In each
category, the amounts were slightly more than those that had been estimated
for 1959, but the levels remained well under the 2,654 calories, sixty-eight
grams of protein, and sixty-three grams of fats and oils estimated by the same
international agency as representing the average for seventeen Latin American
countries during the 1960s. A national nutrition survey reported by the
government in 1970 indicated that the average caloric intake in communities
studied was 79 percent, and the protein intake was 82 percent of standard
normal needs. The consumption of calcium was 62.5 percent of standard normal
needs; iron, 79.2 percent; vitamin A, 57 percent; thiamin, 86 percent;
riboflavin, 55 percent; niacin, 94 percent; pyridoxine, 54 percent; and folic
acid, 37 percent.

     The deficiencies in diet probably varied radically by income distribution
and between urban and rural areas, but the overall incidence has been
sufficiently serious for the government to create several public entities to
deal with deficiency problems. The Nutrition Department, established in the
National Public Health Laboratory with assistance of the United States-based
William Waterman Fund, studies possibilities of diet enrichment through better
food selection. In 1969 a national nutrition survey, conducted with the
assistance of the Institute of Nutritional Sciences of Columbia University,
led to the recommendation that a national nutrition council be established,
and the Nutrition Division was subsequently added to the Ministry of Public
Health and Social Welfare.

     During 1970 the government conducted a supplementary feeding program for
mothers and children that reached some 137,000 persons, and several projects
involving training in nutrition were carried out. Coordination was maintained
with public and private foreign and international organizations. The
government also operated the first of what was designed to become a series of
comedores economicos (low-cost dining rooms) to be established in all parts of
the country. The pilot dining room, located in a working-class suburb of Santo
Domingo, featured complete meals at a cost of RD$0.25 (1 peso equals US$1-see
Glossary). The unit was reported to serve 1,500 sitdown customers daily, and
takeout customers were said to purchase one or two meals in order to serve
five or six family members.

     A 1969 government survey of 552 Santo Domingo families in a wide range of
income brackets and believed to be representative of 85 percent of the city's
population provided a picture of the general pattern of urban food
consumption. Rice was by a wide margin the most important cereal food,
followed by wheat flour and wheat products, such as bread and pasta. Starchy
root crops, in order of importance, were white potatoes, cassava, sweet
potatoes, and taro. Onions were the most popular of the garden vegetables,
followed by tomatoes, peas, garlic and red peppers. In addition to bananas,
the most frequently eaten fruit avocados and plantains most often were
important elements in the diet. Citrus fruit consumption was minor, and the
consumption of the more exotic tropical fruits, such as papayas and mangoes,
was negligible. Most of the standard garden vegetables and a wide variety of
tropical fruits are available seasonally in Santo Domingo, but temperate
fruits and some vegetables, such as cauliflower and asparagus, are imported
and find a good market at high prices.

     The survey showed beef to have represented about half of the cost of all
meat purchases. Poultry ranked next, and there were limited purchases of pork
and of goat meat. Sheep raising is a rarity in the Dominican Republic, and
consumption of lamb and veal was too minor to be listed as a cost item.
Domestic beef is generally regarded as being of mediocre quality, but the
preference for it was so marked that lower income families devoted a larger
proportion of their food budgets to it than did families with higher incomes.
Fish and seafood consumption was minor, but the proportion of the budget
devoted to it tended to increase with the level of income. There was also an
appreciable consumption of prepared meats. Among the more important prepared
meats are imported tinned items and sausages produced by the German-Jewish
colony of Sosua, which also cures hams and makes butter, cheeses, and
sandwich bread for sale in Santo Domingo.

     Diets in urban localities in the interior are somewhat less varied than
those in the capital city because of difficulties in transporting and storing
perishables. Both in rural localities and in working-class urban households,
most of the diet consists of rice, kidney beans, starchy root crops, and
bananas. Green vegetables other than onions, garlic, and tomatoes are rarely
eaten. A piece of meat is sometimes added to the family stewpot, but fish and
poultry are rarely served. Although most small farmers keep chickens, few are
killed because their eggs can be sold at a good price. Fish consumption is low
because seafood cannot be transported without considerable spoilage, and in
the Dominican Republic-as in much of Latin America-it is little esteemed as a