In 2009 the Caribbean Development Bank study of Belize unearthed some disturbing information on Belize. Here are some. More than one third of our Primary School children who sat the Primary School leaving examinations got under fifty percent. In college, girls outnumber boys by 138 girls to every 100 boys Secondary or college enrollment is barely over 50 percent.
POVERTY in the country of Belize had reached FIFTY -FIVE PERCENT (55%) Ethnic groups were shown to be poor. In the case of the Maya, 68 percent living in poverty. For Mestizos 42 percent were living in poverty. For Creoles 32 percent were living in poverty. No figures were shown for Garifuna or East Indians but for sure the figures would be high. For the southside of Belize City the statistics can be described by the words of Otis Redding song-“Pain in my Heart”.
A whopping FIFTY PERCENT (50%) of all the households on the Southside of Belize City are unemployed. One out of every two persons is not working. Southside Belize City has some twenty odd thousand jobless persons. Although Southside is less than ten percent of the population of the whole country, yet 40 percent of the countries murders were committed in the Southside of Belize City.
There are 5,300 households in the Southside of Belize City. There are large numbers of children on the Southside who are growing up in homes where there are absent fathers. There are also large numbers of overstressed and impoverished mothers,
although the Caribbean back study gave no specific statistic.