Kiribati

IN 1971, AFTER WINNING the right to autonomy, the Gilbert Islands became the Republic of Kiribati. Eight years later, Britain ceded rights to the neighboring Line and Phoenix Islands to Kiribati in a treaty of friendship. The country, which straddles the equator, is composed of 33 coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean. Kiri-bati's economy is almost entirely tied up with tourism and the production and export of copra and fish. The phosphate deposits that made the island valuable to the British were exhausted by 1979. Among Kiribati's population of 103,092, approximately 8,000 workers are economically active. This figure does not include those involved in subsistence farming. There is a severe shortage of skilled workers on Kiribati, and 70 percent of the population are underemployed. Another two percent are unemployed. The islands suffer from a widely fluctuating economy and a weak infrastructure. A combination of foreign aid from Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and China and regular remittances received from Kiribati people who work abroad provides the islands with sufficient income to classify it as a lower-middle-income country.

Assessing poverty on Kiribati is difficult because almost no data are available on major social indicators. The United Nations Human Development Report does not rank Kiribati on overall quality of life issues. In comparison to most countries in the region, Kiribati lags behind in healthcare, education, and life expectancy. Death rates are unusually high for the region. However, poverty on Kiribati is not extreme since most families can feed themselves by gardening, fishing, carpentry, or selling handicrafts. Kiribati has a per capita annual income of $800, but income is unequally distributed, and this pattern has continued for generations as wealth is handed down within families.

Life expectancy on Kiribati is 61.71 years, and females outlive males by approximately six years. Between 1980 and 2000, life expectancy for males increased from 50 to 59 years, and the projected life span for females climbed from 54 to 65 years. The median age is 38.9 years. Just over one-fifth of the population is under the age of 14, and 3.3 percent have seen a 65th birthday. Over half of all islanders lack access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation. There are 30 physicians on the islands, and 50 to 79 percent of the people have access to affordable essential drugs.

Infant mortality on Kiribati is high, but it has improved in recent years. Between 1990 and 2005, the number of infant deaths decreased from 65 per 1,000 live births to 49 per 1,000 live births. With a death rate of 43.16 per 1,000, female infants are likelier to survive than males with a 53.64-per-1,000 death rate. Between 1990 and 2003, the mortality rate of all children under the age of 5 fell from 88 per 1,000 to 66 per 1,000.

Approximately 13 percent of all children under the age of 5 are underweight, and five percent of babies are underweight at birth. Some 28 percent of all under-5s suffer from moderate to severe stunting, and 11 percent experience moderate to severe wasting.

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