33.4 percent of Iraqi youth are unemployed while 37.2 percent of high school and college graduates
are jobless.
Thirty three percent of Iraqis are underemployed. (In contrast, unemployment stood at 3.6 percent in
the 1980s, when Iraq was locked in a costly war with Iran, and 13.6 percent in the 1990s, when United
Nations sanctions crippled the economy after Saddam Hussein's troops invaded Kuwait.)
Eighty five percent of households suffer from erratic electricity supply.
Only 54 percent of Iraqi families have access to clean water, and 37 percent of homes are connected to a sewage network, compared to 75 percent in the 1980s.
Two decades ago, Iraq had one of the highest medical standards in the Middle East, but hospitals now overwhelmed by bombing and shooting victims suffer from a severe lack of equipment and medicine.
The number of mothers who die during labor has reached 93 in every 100,000 births in Iraq, compared to 14 in Jordan and 32 in Saudi Arabia.
Twenty-five percent of Iraqi families could not generate the equivalent of $70 in a week to cope with an emergency.
From a survey, conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning and the United Nations Development Program with funding by the Norwegian government, taken in the second half of last year in 18 provinces. |
