Abduction of children by child traffickers was already a chronic problem in pre-earthquake Haiti, where thousands were handed over by their poor starving families into lives of domestic servitude.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7086466/Haiti-earthquake-orphans-for-sale-for-50.html

However, Haiti has not always been a poverty stricken country.

Back in the 1970's … they were self-sufficient and managed to feed a majority of their population while producing trade surpluses.

What caused their demise? In short. Bill Clinton. The once semi-prosperous nation became poor because of Bill Clinton’s Rice Policy.

In 1995 he forced the nation to drop tariffs on rice imported from America. Haiti dropped its import tariffs on rice from 50% to 3%. Clinton claimed this move would help Haiti jump into the "Industrial Era. Yet After adopting Clinton's policies, Haiti became the fourth-largest importer of rice from the U.S, even though they were the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Most of the imported rice came from Clinton's home state in Arkansas. Today, Haiti is the fifth largest importer of American rice in the world, even though their population is just 10 million. This policy was especially harmful for Haitians, considering that rice was one of their main crops. This has resulted in mass starvation in Haiti.

In April 2010, Bill Clinton, who was appointed special envoy to Haiti by Obama, even officially apologized to Haiti for the Rice Policy , saying

We Made a Devil's Bargain.

https://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/1/clinton_rice

.And it’s failed everywhere it’s been tried. And you just can’t take the food chain out of production. And it also undermines a lot of the culture, the fabric of life, the sense of self-determination. And I have been involved for several years in agricultural products, principally in Rwanda, Malawi, other places in Africa, and now increasingly in Latin America, and I see this.

. http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports/haiti/clintonhaiti.html

Many also hold the Clinton responsible for the deaths caused by AIDs in Haiti because the Clinton foundation most likey provided ‘dirty’ medicines which were later found to be substandard and watered down.

.

Press accounts suggest that the Clinton Foundation became involved in Haiti by 2003. At that time, the Clinton Foundation certainly was not authorized or itself equipped to engage in international activities “fighting HIV/AIDS”, yet it did so starting in 2003. So far, it is not clear what medicines may have been provided under the auspices of the Clinton Foundation to those afflicted with HIV/AIDS in Haiti and in other countries. It is clear that Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation developed ties to Ranbaxy, an Indian company that supplied generic medicines. And it subsequently became clear that Ranbaxy sold adulterated medicines to customers in many nations.

http://www.dadychery.org/2016/05/20/clinton-disaster-fundraising-predatory-humanitarianism.

http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/

It is also interesting how Wikipedia says nothing about Haiti's economy prior to 2010, the year of the Earthquake

Haiti's purchasing power parity GDP fell 8% in 2010 (from US$12.15 billion to US$11.18 billion) and the GDP per capita remained unchanged at PPP US$1,200.[2] Despite having a viable tourist industry, Haiti is one of the world's poorest countries and the poorest in the Americas region, with poverty, corruption, poor infrastructure, lack of health care and lack of education cited as the main sources. The economy receded due to the 2010 earthquake and subsequent outbreak of Cholera. Haiti ranked 145 of 182 countries in the 2010 United Nations Human Development Index, with 57.3% of the population being deprived in at least three of the HDI's poverty measures.[178]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti