The noted Dominican sociologist, Carlos Dore Cabral, contends that statistics for 1994 reveal that 20 percent of the richest segment of the population earned 60 percent of all the national income, while 20 percent of those in the lowest income bracket could barely capture 4.5 percent. This upward trend can be confirmed by looking into 1991 data which showed that 20 percent of the richest part of the population made 60 percent of all national income, while 20 per cent of those in poorest segment earned 5.1 percent.
Carlos Dore maintains that women are the hardest hit by poverty. To substantiate this, he points to the fact that unemployment amongst males is 11.8 percent, while the figure for females is 46.7 percent.
He also says that, according to Central Bank data, the poor increased from 47.3 percent of the population in 1984 to 57.3 percent in 1989. He says, however, that poverty may have been alleviated by the relative economic recovery that took place after 1991; but this cannot be confirmed because of the lack of more recent statistics from the Central Bank.