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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   3205 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 8, 2024

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Why is Haiti so much worse than other overwhelmingly-African Caribbean countries? Is the difference between 80% African DNA and 90% African DNA the difference between a functional and non-functional society? Is it because the other countries have residual institutions left over from colonialism, while Haiti blew everything up in the revolution and started from zero?

Let's compare Haiti to West African countries.

Haiti: GDP per capita PPP: $3185, HDI: 0.552

Liberia: GDP per capita PPP: $1789, HDI: 0.487

Ivory Coast: $6960, 0.534

Togo: $2767, 0.547

Ghana: $6905, 0.602

Nigeria: $6340, 0.548

Burkina Faso: $2682, 0.438

Haiti is a standard-issue West African country in a different hemisphere. Jamaica is in a totally different place: 12K GDP per capita and HDI at 0.7. Dominican Republic: 27K, 0.766 (which seems rather high but they do have gold, tourism and agriculture). Jamaica and the Dominican Republic are less African demographically, there are plenty of mixed and whites, especially in Dominican Republic.

The most important thing seems to be demography, not history. What external problems did Liberia have? The US protected them the whole time but they're worse off than Haiti today. The Liberians were very good at producing their own problems, they didn't need any external threats.

Lots of countries have had external problems and institutional problems. But they don't fall to Haiti levels and stay there. Ukraine has suffered a lot in history, they're at $15K and 0.734 today, during a major war! Vietnam is at a similar level of prosperity and they've done plenty of fighting, plenty of communism. China had about a century where they were constantly pummelled by the world's great powers, by eachother and then by an unusually damaging brand of communism. They blew everything up in a series of revolutions and civil wars, fought half the UN in Korea and skirmished with most of their neighbours: GDP 25K, 0.788.

I did a little research and it looks like Haiti might have Venezuela-tier oil and gas wealth. I don't fully believe it myself, nobody seems to have properly explored it because why would you, Haiti is a shithole. All kinds of crazy stuff happens there, zombies, cannibal gangs. The problem is with the people.

Jamaica

Jamaica is pretty black, where are you getting a huge difference? The main one seems to be that the biracial elite (partially) stayed in Jamaica while they almost all left Haiti between about 1930 and 1965.

A more precise study conducted by the local University of the West Indies - Jamaica's population is more accurately 76.3% African descent or Black, 15.1% Afro-European ( or locally called the Brown Man or Browning Class) , 3.4% East Indian and Afro-East Indian, 3.2% Caucasian, 1.2% Chinese and 0.8% Other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Jamaica

Haiti is 95% black, 5% mixed.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Haiti/Climate#ref54461

That seems like a fairly substantial difference, they still have the mixed whereas in Haiti they're mostly gone.

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