- Second poorest country in Latin America after Haiti; mainly a problem in rural areas of the country.
- Nicaraguans rural poor people consist of families of small-scale farmers and landless farm workers, and also families that combine both agricultural and other income-generating activities on the farm.
- Also, among the poorest and most disadvantaged groups are households headed by women, young people under the age of 15, and indigenous people.
- Most of the rural poor people live in the vast, dry central region where natural recourses are limited and scarce with a high population density.
- The civil war between 1980 and 1990 began an economic crisis in 1987 where the economy collapsed was the cause of rural-living people being poor. Also natural environmental disasters create an immense amount of destruction and loss of life which worsens the living conditions for the already poor rural people.
- In 2001, 1/5 people had household access to electricity.
- Poverty line (level of "total" per capita monthly expenditures at which an individual obtains the minimum daily caloric requirement)- 2 million people fell below.
- Extreme poverty line (level of per capita monthly "food" expenditures at which an individual obtains the minimum daily caloric requirement)- 44% of the poor population fell below.
http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/country/home/tags/nicaragua
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20207612~menuPK:435735~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:430367,00.html
STATS
- 46% of the population survive on less than $2 a day, and 15% of the population live in extreme poverty.
- 15% of all children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working on the streets to survive.
- Two thirds of rapes reported between January and August 2011 involved girls under 17 years of age.
- 30% of the total number of pregnancies in young mothers are teenagers.
- Nicaragua has the second highest rate of domestic violence in Latin America, with one in every three women reporting physical abuse.
- Approximately 500,000 children are outside of the school system, and of those attending school, only 45% complete the 6th grade.
http://www.casa-alianza.org/casas/nicaragua