Living Conditions after the Earthquake in Haiti: Challenges, Results and Lessons (NOPOOR mid-term assessment, November 20, 2014)

The slides, presented at the two-year mark of the NOPOOR research project, ask how far living conditions deteriorated after the earthquake, how the labor market responded and what institutional aid achieved. The data come from the Post Earthquake Living Conditions Survey (ECVMAS), run by the Haitian Statistics and Data Processing Institute with DIAL and the World Bank on a sample of 5,000 households, the first socioeconomic survey since the earthquake, together with a 2007 survey of employment and the informal economy. Findings show labor participation rising from 47.7% in 2007 to 56.9% in 2012.

The authors report that reconstruction aid reached just 7% of households that suffered extensive housing damage, that three times more makeshift dwellings than permanent buildings were destroyed in the hardest hit areas, and that the main coping strategies were sending secondary members out to work and drawing on support networks and household solidarity. They conclude that aid focused on emergency assistance, overlooked the population outside the metropolitan area and was limited by weak institutions.