There is a clear gender gap with regard to labor income. As previously discussed, the education levels of women and their employment characteristics are different from men in that the former tend to be less educated and are more likely to be employed in the informal sector. Even after accounting for all these demographic and employment characteristics, male workers seem to have much higher labor income than female workers. Our regression results suggest that the earnings of male workers are 57–82 percent higher than those of female workers.<sup>8</sup> As such, gender inequalities are observed not only along demographic and employment characteristics but also in the baseline productivity of jobs that they have and/or gender-based discrimination.

The formality of jobs positively correlates with earning levels—that is, workers in the informal sector have about 64–68 percent lower income than workers in the formal sector. As discussed earlier, a significant share of jobs available in Kinshasa is informal in nature (without proper registration or formal accounting books). One of the possible reasons for this is a perennial shortage of wage jobs, which pushes workers into low-quality, informal jobs. There is a growing need for the creation of good-quality jobs by improving the business environment, which would in turn attract productive firms and private investments. Not only does it entail greater investments in key urban services and infrastructure, expanding access to jobs also requires capacity building for the government to efficiently administer rules and regulations that could facilitate the creation of quality jobs in Kinshasa (for example, reducing administrative time and costs associated with the formalization process).<sup>9</sup> Earnings differentials across sectors appear to be driven partly by different hours of work coupled with varying levels of productivity. There is a significant gap in earnings between service and industry jobs, on one hand, and agriculture, on the other. However, once hours of work and other demographic characteristics are accounted for, this gap is no longer statistically significant. In agriculture, the average hours of work per week was 28 hours, which was significantly lower than other sectors like industry (37 hours) and services (46 hours). Many workers who engage in agriculture, agro-business and fishing in Kinshasa are indeed underemployed compared to other sectors. The underemployment in this sector is likely due to the lack of connectivity and other incentives for the development of agricultural production. However, these workers also have limited access to more productive jobs in urban centers due to higher costs of living and a lack of connective infrastructure—a topic that is discussed more extensively in the following section.

# **3.2. Spatial distribution of jobs**

The geographical distribution of jobs within urban Kinshasa reveals high concentration of jobs in a few pockets within the city. In Kinshasa, more than 70 percent of workers work at office or a particular, non-home workplace. For the spatial analysis of jobs within urban Kinshasa, we rely on the 2017 JICA Commuter Survey, which provides detailed information on the locations of jobs and means of transportation to reach those jobs.<sup>10</sup> Panel (A) in Figure 8 shows the estimated number of jobs per square kilometers at the quartier level. Panel (B) presents spatial variation in the index

> 8 A previous World Bank study in the DRC also highlights the importance of income disparities between men and women especially in urban areas where women appear to be disadvantaged (World Bank 2014). 9 World Bank (2018b, 39).

> 10 See Annex A for details on the 2017/18 JICA Commuter Survey.

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