Protecting Social Achievements during Economic Crisis in Cuba

Abstract

In the early 1990s, Cuba ranked among the top 5 per cent of 127 developing countries in such social indicators as life expectancy at birth, infant mortality and adult literacy. In fact, Cuba’s population fared better in these areas than did the people of several of the 47 higher-income ‘industrial countries’. Moreover, the data indicate that Cuba made considerable progress in social development during the past four decades, even though its economic growth during this period was not very strong and its economy suffered a very sharp decline in the early 1990s. UNDP’s 1996 Human Development Report ranked Cuba 79th of 174 countries in terms of its human development index, but if the GDP per capita component of the index were disregarded so that a country’s ranking depended only on health and educational indicators, Cuba would have been placed with Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay just within the top quintal of all the world’s countries. Its per capita income level alone, however, would have placed it below over half of the countries covered by the report (UNDP, 1996).