Abstract
In this article, we shed light on the changing living conditions between 1975 and 2005 in eight major cities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). To this end, household data from two sets of surveys have been combined and analyzed in terms of budget and asset ownership. Although this exercise is seriously constrained by methodological difficulties, some salient facts do emerge. To begin with, the urban sector does not seem to be much affected by the formal crisis the country went through. Apart from in Bukavu and regardless of a substitution effect between technological and nontechnological consumer goods, no general decrease in consumption or assets occurred over these past three decades. An explanation for this remarkable result could be found in a more efficient use of the food budget as well as a further dependence on informal income strategies. Linked to the former explanation, this study pointed to a general replacement of starchy staples by cereals, and, to a lesser extent, (palm) oil. Additionally, a marked increase in the budget share spent on education also seemed to be a common phenomenon for all eight cities. And finally, changes in economic geography seem to have structured the evolution of (mainly technological) assets owned by households quite well. Apart from these general tendencies, this study above all revealed that each city has its own particularities, which deserve to be further researched.
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Notes
For a detailed historical account of this period, see Reyntjens (2009).
Here, one can already mention that the 1-2-3 Survey, strictly speaking, is only representative of the sector level within each of the 11 provinces. As such, the urban sector in each province often represents several cities at once, which are analyzed separately here. This also explains why the number of households surveyed is generally lower in 2005 compared to 1975.
For more information about these microeconomic concepts, see Deaton (1997).
Of course, this strategy is not without risk: differences between cities and changes over time with respect to the proportion of owners and tenants will probably bias final welfare rankings. In order to better assess this potential bias, a detailed analysis of the housing market in each city (and its evolution over time) is required, though this falls outside the scope of this study.
These concerns also refer to two desirable characteristics of poverty lines. Where “specificity” claims poverty lines to be context-sensitive, “consistency” requires them to be mutually comparable. For more information, see Ravallion and Bidani (1994:75-77).
A pousse-pousse is a big iron nonmotorized cart used in Congolese cities to transport all sort of merchandise.
More particularly, a further standardization is imputed on the initial indices generated by polychoric PCA, where the minimal value of the sample has been set to 0 and the mean value to 1. For more information on the exact procedure followed, see Marivoet and Keje (2011:19-20) who followed a highly similar methodology.
Despite being unable to clearly identify the problem, we would like to call into question the reliability of the 1-2-3 Survey executed in South Kivu. Given the fact this province largely shared the same troublesome history, it is at least very unlikely that South Kivu would be much poorer than its neighboring provinces Maniema and North Kivu, as some other studies have shown (République démocratique du Congo 2006; Marivoet 2009).
Of course, these city-specific phenomena certainly deserve to be researched in more detail.
Though, not all these changes were significant at a 0.05 level.
For Kikwit and Kananga, one could observe an increase in radio ownership instead of a larger command over televisions. In Mbandaka, neither trend seemed to have occurred.
This improvement in educational attainment and what it entailed in terms of economic opportunities may explain why families over time have spent an increasing share of their budget on schooling in order to compensate for the diminishing involvement of the state in this sector.
When analyzing this figure, abstraction will be made from the significance tests performed on each city’s budget distribution.
Again, these changes based on budget data have not proven to be significant at a 0.05 level.
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Marivoet, W. Evolution in living standards in eight Congolese cities between 1975 and 2005. Urban Forum 26, 15–38 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-014-9230-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-014-9230-8