Marianne Medrano's List: cst8 El salvador

• Location: 

      Middle America, bordering  the North Pacific Ocean, between Guatemala and Honduras     

    Coordinates: 

      13 50 N, 88 55 W

  • number 1
• Natural resources: 

      hydropower, geothermal  power, petroleum, arable land     

    Natural hazards: 

      known as the Land of  Volcanoes; frequent and sometimes very destructive earthquakes and  volcanic activity; extremely susceptible to hurricanes     

    Environment current issues: 

      deforestation; soil  erosion; water pollution; contamination of soils from disposal of toxic  wastes

  • number 16

  • could these be some causes for poverty in this country?
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• GDP: 

    $41.63 billion (2007 est.)   

   GDP growth rate: 

    2.8%   

   GDP per capita: 

    $4,700
• Unemployment: 

    6.5% official rate; but the economy has much underemployment
• Budget: 

    revenues: $2.84 billion
   expenditures: $3.167 billion;
• Currency: 

    The US dollar became El Salvador's currency in 2001

  • Amanda says that some people still get paid in el Salvadorian money, so this causes friction between some people
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• Consequently, by 1987 El Salvador's  economic output barely equaled 80 percent of its 1978 level, and exports  were only the third most important source of foreign exchange after  foreign aid and remittances from Salvadorans living abroad
• By mid-1987 observers estimated  that the total cost to the economy based on lost agricultural  production, damaged infrastructure, and funds diverted from economic to  military purposes was about US$1.5 billion.
• El Salvador entered the 1970s as a relatively poor middleincome  country with per capita income greater than that of Thailand and  slightly less than that of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Malaysia  and Costa Rica.

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• By 1980 only 31 percent of the population aged ten  years or older was considered illiterate.

• 2005 est. pop. 6,705,000

  • number 2
• The country is bounded on the south by the Pacific Ocean, on the west by Guatemala, and on the north and east by Honduras.

  • number 1
• About half of the land is used for either crops or pasturage. Corn is the chief subsistence crop, and rice, beans, oilseeds, and sorghum are also grown; coffee and sugar are the major cash crops.

  • number 7

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• 
  Percentage tree cover in El Salvador, derived from (top) AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) at 1-kilometer spatial resolution in 1992 and (bottom) MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) at 500-meter resolution in 2001. Image modified from Hecht and Saatchi 2007.

• The wealth in El Salvador is held by a small minority of the population who made their money from coffee and sugar
• El Salvador's per capita income is the fifth lowest in the Western Hemisphere
• The infant mortality rate, though still high, has fallen by over 70 percent in the last 3 decades, from 105 per 1,000 live births in 1970 to 31 per 1,000 in 1997. During the same period, life expectancy increased from 57.4 to 69.1 years. The death rate for children under 5 remains high at 81 per 1,000.
• According to the USAID report published in 1998, less than 50 percent of Salvadorans graduate from the sixth grade, only 1 out of 3 complete the ninth grade, and only 1 out of 5 complete high school.

  • number 6
• the country's main potable water source, is contaminated with dangerously high levels of mercury and other heavy metals.

  • and 14

  • number 13

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• The Water and Sanitation Sub-Activity is part of El Salvador’s five-year Compact that was signed in 2006. The water and sanitation services are designed to reduce poverty and increase household income by a) decreasing the cost and time to collect water, and b) reducing the incidence of water-borne diseases which reduces the costs of health services and the number of hours of work lost by water borne diseases.

• Anda is working to improve access to sanitation through: 

    
    
  • pilot programmes to build wastewater treatment plants in rural areas, and
    
  • a feasibility study for two large wastewater treatment plants for the capital San Salvador

  • help to relieve the problem in number 13

• Corn is the chief subsistence crop, and rice, beans, oilseeds, and sorghum are also grown; coffee and sugar are the major cash crops

• GDP (2008): $22.3 billion; PPP GDP (2008): $43.94 billion (IMF estimate).
  GDP annual real growth rate (2008): 3.2%.