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Poverty Survey Finds Satisfaction With Basic Human Needs

By Earl Bousquet

December 15, 2004 - A survey designed to help monitor the welfare and social trends for St. Lucia’s urban and rural poor has found that while some feel their economic situation has worsened in the past year, an overwhelming majority are satisfied with the basic human and social needs and requirements provided by the Government.

         The Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire (CWIQ) Survey was conducted here by the Government’s Statistics Department between October and December of this year. It covered a national sample survey of 1,306 households across the country, over a seven-week period.

         The CWIQ survey compared findings today with what existed in 2001, when the last National Census was carried out by the Statistics Department.

         However, it offers a quicker method for monitoring poverty than the Survey of Living Conditions (SLC), which contains extensive expenditure and income modules and which was last conducted by the Department in 1995.

An international pilot project developed by the World Bank principally for the African region, St. Lucia is the first Caribbean country in which the CWIQ exercise was carried out.

            The survey’s findings provides indicators of living standards for the households and household members, including such areas as land assets, home ownership, type of home construction, fuel for cooking, ownership of selected household goods, literacy levels, employment, health and nutrition.

It also provides indicators of access, utilization and satisfaction, such as access to clean water, primary and secondary school services, utilization of facilities by way of enrolment rates by gender, satisfaction with school and medical services.

            Aimed at communities that ought to be the focus of the Government’s poverty reduction strategies, the 2004 CWIQ Survey found that most persons interviewed were satisfied with the basic social services provided by Government, especially Housing, Water, Health and Education.

Household Characteristics

The Survey looked at the provision of services in Water, Sanitation and the Environment.

In terms of water, it found that almost all households in the areas surveyed had direct access to a water supply, or access to such a supply was less than 15 minutes away.

In that regard, it found that 99% of the urban poor and 97% of the rural poor had access to a water supply.

The survey also found that 92% of all the households surveyed had access to safe, pipe-borne water -- an increase from 89% in 2001-- and out of that, 95% of urban households had safe water, compared with 88% of rural households.

            Two-thirds (66%) of the households reported having safe means of sanitation, with flush-to-sewage or septic tank systems – up from 53% in 2001; and 95% of the households reported using improved waste disposal methods, with their household waste either collected or disposed of in a skip bin.

            With regard to environmental practices at home, the survey found that 92% of the households use non-wood fuel for cooking (up from 88% in 2001) and 90% use electricity for lighting, an increase from 87% three years ago.

            In the area of household assets, the survey found that three-quarters (75%) of households interviewed owned their own homes; and a quarter of those interviewed (25%) owned a vehicle – down from 28% in 2001, mainly on account of the clean-up effects of the Environmental Levy that put a ban on used vehicles over five years old.

            The majority of those interviewed (88%) live in a separate private house and two-thirds (66%) own the land on which the house is built, either with title or through the family. It also found, however, that only 44% of the urban poor own the house plots on which they live.

            In terms of household items owned by the urban and rural poor, the survey found that: 92% of households reported owning a stove; 85% had at least one television set (as against 79% in 2001; 61% own at least one mobile telephone (a major increase from 2001, when the level was only 14%); and 50% of households had a washing machine.

            Only 18% of households of the urban and rural poor have a computer today, but that’s up from 13% three years ago; and Internet connections exist in only 10% of households, but that’s up from 8% in 2001.

Education

The CWIQ survey found that the adult literacy rate in the households surveyed stood at 89% and in keeping with the national average, it was higher for women (90%) than for men (87%).

Two-thirds (66%) of the households had good access to a primary education, while just over one-third (33%) had good access to secondary education, with schools located less than 15 minutes away.

The primary school enrollment rate was found to be a whopping 93%, while secondary education enrollment was 79%.

Further broken down, primary school enrollment rates were 94% for females and 91% for males, again reflecting the national tendency for females to be more likely to be in school. At the secondary level, however, a more significant gender gap was found with 86% females in attendance and only 72% males attending.

Enrollment rates were found to be similar for urban and rural areas, but secondary school enrollment was lower for the poorest households, especially in the rural areas (67%).

However, females were found to have higher attendance rates, lower drop-out rates and higher literacy rates than males.

Accessibility to education was found to be significantly higher in urban areas than in rural areas; and the poorest access to education was reported in Laborie, Choiseul and Soufriere.

But children reported satisfactory levels of 90%, with no problems at school.

Medical and Health Services

The survey found that over half the population had access to a good health facility less than 15 minutes away, but there was a noticeable difference between the urban (60%) and rural (50%) households. In this regards, households in Choiseul and Laborie reported the poorest access.

            It was found that 11% of the population studied reported a sickness or injury in the four week period preceding the survey, which was taken as an indicator of the need for such medical services. This need was higher at 12% in rural areas, as against 9% in urban areas.

            The survey found, however, that overall, 15% of the population consulted a health practitioner in the four weeks preceding the exercise, which was taken as an indicator of use.

It also found that only one-fifth (20%) of those who consulted health facilities were dissatisfied with the medical services received; and among them, half (50%) gave slow service as the major reason and 44% gave cost (particularly of private medical services) as another reason.

In the area of Reproductive Health and Child Care, the survey found that nearly all of the 96% of women who had a live birth in the year preceding the survey had pre-natal care. It also found that of all the babies born in the past five years, only 2% were not delivered at a hospital or maternity home, or with professional care.

Teenage Pregnancy was found to be low at just 3% of all live births in the past year, but for the urban poor this proportion was higher at 9%, indicating a disproportionate number of young females coming to urban areas.

Gender

The results indicate that female-headed households exist often in less favourable circumstances. Half are reported as being unemployed, with 25% falling into the poorest category, as against 18% of male-headed households.

            The survey also found that female-headed households are less likely to own assets such as land (61% vs 65% of male headed), housing 76% vs 80%) or vehicles (14% vs 34%).

Employment

The unemployment rate was determined by the survey to be 18.8%, up from 17% in 2001. There was a significant gender difference, however, with unemployment among males at 14%, as against 25% for females.

            Youth unemployment was markedly higher at 39%, with the figure for female youth being five percent higher at 44%.

            The overall under-employment rate was 8%, with 6% in the urban areas and11% in the rural areas, or 10% among males and 6% among females.

Usefulness of Report

Director of Statistics Edwin St. Catherine, who authored the report, says it “will be useful to the St. Lucia Government.” He also said it will assist other “key local, regional and  international agencies concerned with poverty alleviation and monitoring.”

Among the agencies identified by Mr St. Catherine to benefit from the survey were: the Ministries of Social Transformation, Education and Health; the Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF) and the Poverty Reduction Fund (PRF); as well as the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

According to St. Catherine, the report can also be helpful in putting together St. Lucia’s Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Action plan, which is awaiting further formulation in 2005 to reach a full Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).

“Nonetheless,” he added, “St. Lucia, in common with its OECS neighbours, must increase efforts and deploy resources to improve the coverage and frequency of its monitoring it is to adequately follow the achievement of its poverty reduction targets.”

He said both sets of surveys were important.

The SLC, he explained, is needed “to cover the economic aspects of poverty, such as the poverty gap.”

But welfare surveys like the CWIQ, he added, “can offer a complementary tool as a less demanding rapid and less costly solution to measuring household access to, use of and satisfaction with services, as well as providing independent measures of household and population welfare in terms of assets, amenities, education and health.”

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