Publication: Kenya - Inside Informality: Poverty, Jobs, Housing and Services in Nairobi's Slums
Loading...
Date
2006-05-31
ISSN
Published
2006-05-31
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This report discusses the results of a study designed to fill gaps in knowledge about slums in Nairobi. Drawing on detailed surveys of households residing in slums in Nairobi, this study aims to develop a demographic, economic and infrastructure profile of slum settlements in these two cities. Analytically, it focuses on the following questions: how poor and inadequately served are slum dwellers in Nairobi What are the factors correlated with poverty among slum households in the city The report finds: First, the incidence of economic poverty is very high in Nairobi's slums and it is accompanied by horrible living conditions and other forms of non-economic poverty. Second, Nairobi's slums provide low-quality but high-cost shelter. Third, somewhat encouragingly, there is heterogeneity among Nairobi's slums dwellers, their living conditions, and their economic welfare. Fourth, a systematic comparison between poor and non-poor households reveals five types of non-monetary factors that are strongly correlated with poverty in the slums: (1) household demographics (size and gender and age composition); (2) education; (3) ownership of a micro-enterprise; (4) unemployment in the household; and (5) infrastructure access, in particular electricity and water supply. Given their strong correlation with poverty, these five factors can and should serves as a basis-a starting point-for the design of any poverty alleviation efforts in the slums. Fifth, slum dwellers' own development priorities -- a first proxy for "demand"-- resonate strongly with the technical analyses. Sixth, although upgrading efforts in the slums have been piece-meal and modest thus far, they do appear to have created some benefits. The paper is structured as follows. Section two outlines the research methodology and the data. Section three estimates poverty incidence in the slums and identifies factors correlated with poverty. Sections four through nine present both descriptive data and analyses on each of the following topics: demographcs, economic base, housing, previous residence of "emigrants," infrastructure, and education. Section 10 summarizes the development priorities of slum dwellers and Section 11 presents conclusions and policy implications.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2006. Kenya - Inside Informality: Poverty, Jobs, Housing and Services in Nairobi's Slums. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42049 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication World Bank Group Support to Ghana, Fiscal Years 2013–23 (Approach Paper)(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-28)This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) will assess the performance of World Bank Group support to Ghana in achieving its development objectives between fiscal years (FY)13 and FY23. The evaluation period spans two Bank Group–supported country strategies—the FY13–16 Country Partnership Strategy (CPS), which was extended by two years to FY18, and the current FY22–26 Country Partnership Framework (CPF). The CPE will assess the relevance, coherence, and efficacy of the Bank Group support to help Ghana tackle its main development challenges, including by examining how the Bank Group adapted its engagement in response to changing conditions, priorities, and lessons from experience. In addition to assessing the evolution of the overarching strategy of support and its implementation and impact, the evaluation will assess the Bank Group’s contribution to supporting Ghana in terms of three important thematic challenges faced over the evaluation period.Publication The Welfare Impact of Rural Electrification : A Reassessment of the Costs and Benefits(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)It has long been claimed that rural electrification greatly improves the quality of life. Lighting alone brings benefits such as increased study time and improved study environment for school children, extended hours for small businesses, and greater security. But electrification brings more than light. It's second most common use is for television, which brings both entertainment and information. The people who live in rural areas greatly appreciate these benefits and are willing to pay for them at levels more than sufficient to cover the costs. However, the evaluation of these and other benefits, as well as of their distribution, has been sparse. This report reviews recent methodological advances made in measuring the benefits of rural electrification (RE) and commends them. It also notes that the understanding of the techniques shown in project documents is sometimes weak, and quality control for the economic analysis in project documents lacking. This study shows that willingness to pay for electricity is high, exceeding the long-run marginal cost of supply. Hence, in principle, RE investments can have good rates of return and be financially sustainable. But caveats are in order. The first caveat is that attention needs to be paid to ensuring least cost supply, including limiting system losses. Second, continued attention needs to be paid to achieving the right balance between financial sustainability and reaching the poor.Publication Improving Energy Access to the Urban Poor in Developing Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-11)The case studies documented in this report aim to inform the energy access community (including practitioners, civil society groups, project planners, end users) about best practices of successful energy access initiatives targeted at slum dwellers. Eight case studies focusing on electrification and household energy were selected from India, Bangladesh, Colombia and Brazil, all countries that have had varying success in providing access to modern energy services for slum dwellers. The cases had to meet all or some of the following criteria: 1) limited to developing countries; 2) demonstrate innovative methods of improving energy access, including collaborative stakeholder engagement; 3) at least one example of small local energy service providers; 4) contributed to community development by promoting local skill development and income generation; and 5) representative of electricity and different sources of household energy. The case studies describe the existing conditions in the slum, type of energy service provided, the key characters involved, conditions for success, and replicable factors. Common barriers to energy access were identified and impact on the lives of slum dwellers, were also discussed.Publication Strategic Planning for Poverty Reduction in Vietnam : Progress and Challenges for Meeting the Localized Millennium Development Goals(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-01)This paper discusses the progress that Vietnam has made toward meeting a core set of development goals that the government recently adopted as part of its Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS). These goals are strongly related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but are adapted and expanded to reflect Vietnam's national challenges and the government's ambitious development plans. For each Vietnam Development Goal, the authors describe recent trends in relation to the trajectories implied by the MDGs, outline the intermediate targets identified by the government, and discuss the challenges involved in meeting these. Relative to other countries of similar per capita expenditures, Vietnam has made rapid progress in a number of key areas. Poverty has halved over the 1990s, enrollment rates in primary education have risen to 91 percent (although there is a quality problem), indicators of gender equity have been strengthened, child mortality has been reduced, maternal health has improved, and real progress has been made in combating malaria and other communicable diseases. In contrast, Vietnam scores worse than other comparable countries in the areas of child malnutrition, access to clean water, and combating HIV/AIDS. A number of important crosscutting issues emerge from this analysis that need to be addressed. One such challenge is improving equity, both in terms of ensuring that the benefits of growth are distributed evenly across the population and in terms of access to public services. This will involve addressing the affordability of education and curative health care for poor households. Improvements in public expenditure planning are needed to align resources better to stated desired outcomes and to link nationally-defined targets to subnational planning and budgeting processes. There is also a need to address capacity and data gaps which will be crucial for effective monitoring.Publication Mainstreaming Climate Adaptation into Development Assistance in Mozambique : Institutional Barriers and Opportunities(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-09)Based on a literature review and expert interviews, this paper analyzes the most important climate impacts on development goals and explores relevant institutions in the context of mainstreaming climate adaptation into development assistance in Mozambique. Climate variability and change can significantly hinder progress toward attaining the Millennium Development Goals and poverty aggravates the country's climate vulnerability. Because Mozambique is one of the major recipients of official development assistance in the world, there is a clear interest in ensuring that the risks of climate impacts are incorporated into the country's development investments. A screening of donor activities at the sub-national level shows that a high share of development assistance is invested in climate-sensitive sectors, partly in areas that are particularly exposed to droughts, floods, and cyclones. The authors find that Mozambique has a supportive legislative environment and donors have a high awareness of climate risks. However, limited individual, organizational, networking, and financial capacity constrain mainstreaming initiatives. Given strong limitations at the national level, bilateral and multilateral donors can play a key role in fostering institutional capacity in Mozambique.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Remarks at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10-12)World Bank Group President David Malpass discussed biodiversity and climate change being closely interlinked, with terrestrial and marine ecosystems serving as critically important carbon sinks. At the same time climate change acts as a direct driver of biodiversity and ecosystem services loss. The World Bank has financed biodiversity conservation around the world, including over 116 million hectares of Marine and Coastal Protected Areas, 10 million hectares of Terrestrial Protected Areas, and over 300 protected habitats, biological buffer zones and reserves. The COVID pandemic, biodiversity loss, climate change are all reminders of how connected we are. The recovery from this pandemic is an opportunity to put in place more effective policies, institutions, and resources to address biodiversity loss.Publication South Asia Development Update, April 2024: Jobs for Resilience(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-02)South Asia is expected to continue to be the fastest-growing emerging market and developing economy (EMDE) region over the next two years. This is largely thanks to robust growth in India, but growth is also expected to pick up in most other South Asian economies. However, growth in the near-term is more reliant on the public sector than elsewhere, whereas private investment, in particular, continues to be weak. Efforts to rein in elevated debt, borrowing costs, and fiscal deficits may eventually weigh on growth and limit governments' ability to respond to increasingly frequent climate shocks. Yet, the provision of public goods is among the most effective strategies for climate adaptation. This is especially the case for households and farms, which tend to rely on shifting their efforts to non-agricultural jobs. These strategies are less effective forms of climate adaptation, in part because opportunities to move out of agriculture are limited by the region’s below-average employment ratios in the non-agricultural sector and for women. Because employment growth is falling short of working-age population growth, the region fails to fully capitalize on its demographic dividend. Vibrant, competitive firms are key to unlocking the demographic dividend, robust private investment, and workers’ ability to move out of agriculture. A range of policies could spur firm growth, including improved business climates and institutions, the removal of financial sector restrictions, and greater openness to trade and capital flows.Publication Education, Social Norms, and the Marriage Penalty(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-16)A growing literature attributes gender inequality in labor market outcomes in part to the reduction in female labor supply after childbirth, the child penalty. However, if social norms constrain married women’s activities outside the home, then marriage can independently reduce employment, even in the absence childbearing. Given the correlation in timing between childbirth and marriage, conventional estimates of child penalties will conflate these two effects. The paper studies the marriage penalty in South Asia, a context featuring conservative gender norms and low female labor force participation. The study introduces a split-sample, pseudo-panel approach that allows for the separation of marriage and child penalties even in the absence of individual-level panel data. Marriage reduces women’s labor force participation in South Asia by 12 percentage points, whereas the marginal penalty of childbearing is small. Consistent with the central roles of both opportunity costs and social norms, the marriage penalty is smaller among cohorts with higher education and less conservative gender attitudes.Publication Economic Recovery(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04-06)World Bank Group President David Malpass spoke about the world facing major challenges, including COVID, climate change, rising poverty and inequality and growing fragility and violence in many countries. He highlighted vaccines, working closely with Gavi, WHO, and UNICEF, the World Bank has conducted over one hundred capacity assessments, many even more before vaccines were available. The World Bank Group worked to achieve a debt service suspension initiative and increased transparency in debt contracts at developing countries. The World Bank Group is finalizing a new climate change action plan, which includes a big step up in financing, building on their record climate financing over the past two years. He noted big challenges to bring all together to achieve GRID: green, resilient, and inclusive development. Janet Yellen, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, mentioned focusing on vulnerable people during the pandemic. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, focused on giving everyone a fair shot during a sustainable recovery. All three commented on the importance of tackling climate change.Publication Media and Messages for Nutrition and Health(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) has experienced rapid and significant economic growth over the past decade. However, poor nutritional outcomes remain a concern. Rates of childhood undernutrition are particularly high in remote, rural, and upland areas. Media have the potential to play an important role in shaping health and nutrition–related behaviors and practices as well as in promoting sociocultural and economic development that might contribute to improved nutritional outcomes. This report presents the results of a media audit (MA) that was conducted to inform the development and production of mass media advocacy and communication strategies and materials with a focus on maternal and child health and nutrition that would reach the most people from the poorest communities in northern Lao PDR. Making more people aware of useful information, essential services and products and influencing them to use these effectively is the ultimate goal of mass media campaigns, and the MA measures the potential effectiveness of media efforts to reach this goal. The effectiveness of communication channels to deliver health and nutrition messages to target beneficiaries to ensure maximum reach and uptake can be viewed in terms of preferences, satisfaction, and trust. Overall, the four most accessed media channels for receiving information among communities in the study areas were village announcements, mobile phones, television, and out-of-home (OOH) media. Of the accessed media channels, the top three most preferred channels were village announcements (40 percent), television (26 percent), and mobile phones (19 percent). In terms of trust, village announcements were the most trusted source of information (64 percent), followed by mobile phones (14 percent) and television (11 percent). Hence of all the media channels, village announcements are the most preferred, have the most satisfied users, and are the most trusted source of information in study communities from four provinces in Lao PDR with some of the highest burden of childhood undernutrition.