table is further broken down into types of urban areas in order to observe the variation in housing conditions between a nation’s largest city, other urban areas, and rural areas.

**Table 2. Sub-Regional Housing Amenities by Type of Urban Area and High and Low Income** **<u>Quintiles</u>**<sup>**18**</sup>

|||**Type of U**<br>|**rban Area**<br>|||**IncomeQu**<br>|**intile**<sup>19</sup><br>|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|_Category_|_Variable_|_All Areas_|_Largest_<br>_City_|_Other_<br>_Urban_|_Rural_|_QI_<br>_(poorest)_|_QV_<br>_(richest)_|
|Shelter amenities|Roof|16.1|18.6|19.6|13.7|15.4***|18.0|
|(% of HH that|Walls|65.8|90.3|80.0|53.0|58.7***|72.1|
|have)|Floor|52.8|91.4|77.0|35.2|40.7***|65.8|
||Overcrowded|17.6|17.8|16.0|18.4|30.4***|7.4|
|Housing|Electricity|31.6|69.4|49.5|13.4|20.1***|43.0|
|infrastructure|Toilet|27.6|48.8|38.3|17.6|19.6***|35.5|
|amenities (% of<br>HH that have)|Water|38.2|77.3|61.0|17.8|30.5***|45.1|
|Homeownership<br>(% of HH that<br>own)|Ownership|70.6|40.8|53.0|85.5|78.1***|61.5|
|Shortages (% of<br>HH<br>lacking<br>at|Shelter|92.5|85.3|87.6|96.6|94.9***|89.2|
|<br>least one amenity)|Infrastructure|89.9|70.1|82.4|98.0|89.2***|83.7|

Note: Significance of the difference in means between housing amenities and housing shortages for the 1<sup>~~st~~</sup> and 5<sup>~~th~~</sup> income quintiles: *** significant at the 1% level; ** significant at the 5% level; and * significant at the 10% level.

Across all areas and income quintiles in SSA shelter amenities are quite poor, which accords with UNHabitat’s (2009) findings. Only 16 percent of the households in the entire sample (“All Areas” in Table 2) have permanent roofs, and half have non-dirt floors. Overcrowding does not seem to be a serious issue for families with less than 20 percent facing overcrowded conditions, meanwhile more than 65 percent of households everywhere have permanent walls. Across different types of urban areas, the general trends show that as households move away from the largest city to less urbanized area, they face a greater lack of shelter amenities. With nearly 60 percent of the sample residing in rural areas, the poor housing conditions in rural areas appear to drive the low aggregate levels of housing amenities. The disparity between a country’s rural areas and the largest city are most apparent for amenities such as having permanent walls or non-dirt floors. Over 90 percent of households residing in a country’s largest city have permanent walls, whereas in rural areas this percentage drops to 53. Likewise, over 91 percent of households in the largest city have non-dirt floors compared to only 35 percent in rural areas. Overall, despite where households live, over 90 percent of those studied face at least one shelter shortage. The figure is highest among those living in rural areas where the percentage reaches over 96 percent.

Households are even worse off when it comes to housing infrastructure, with access to a piped water source topping the infrastructure amenity that most households have. However, less than 40 percent of all households even have access to piped water, indicating the relative dearth of infrastructure amenities available to households across the region. The scarcity of all housing infrastructure amenities is concentrated in rural areas; less than 20 percent of rural households have either access to piped water, an

> 18 The percentages in this table are the means taken across all countries’ reported percentages of housing amenities. For example, the percentage of households that have a permanent roof was calculated by country (and further broken down by respective countries’ urban areas and quintiles), and the figure shown is the mean percent of households with a roof where each observation is one country. This method prevents biasing the overall percentages towards countries with larger samples.

> 19 In the harmonized SHIP data, expenditure quintiles are used as proxies for income quintiles and are pre-calculated. Quintiles are numbered in ascending order of income with Quintile I representing the poorest 20 percent of a country’s population, and Quintile V representing the richest 20 percent.

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