housing quality for a large number of SSA countries in a systematic way using standardized household surveys.

The key deprivations outlined by the UN and the lack of residential infrastructure can be identified within the SHIP data, allowing for the construction of a cross-country, qualitative index of housing shortage. This shortage is categorized according to two distinct deprivations (see Table 1): the first is attributed to shelter shortage, which comprises of variables indicating whether or not the house itself is made of permanent materials or affords enough space for its inhabitants; and the second is a shortage of housing related infrastructure which includes basic services on which households rely. Both of these shortages are measured individually through the identification of amenity variables (see Table 1), and a shelter or infrastructure shortage is noted when households face one or more deprivations of each type. For the analysis described in the discussion that follows, each household in the sample was assigned an indicator variable that took the value of 1 if the household faces the shortage and zero otherwise.<sup>14</sup> As a result, only the presence, but not the degree of, deprivations is captured in terms of housing shortage type. A description of how deprivation is identified is noted in the table below.

**<u>Table 1. Types of Shortages and a Description of Deprivation</u>**

|**Type of Shortage**|**Amenity Variables**|**Description of Deprivation **|
|---|---|---|
|Shelter (housing conditions)|Roof|Roof made out of non-permanent materials<br>(anything other than concrete, brick, stone,<br>cement,tiles,or shingles)|
||Walls|Walls made from non-permanent materials<br>(anything other than concrete, cement, brick,<br>stone,or wood)|
||Floor|Floors made of earth,clay,or mud<br>|
||Overcrowding|More than three people per room<sup>15</sup>(calculated<br>from data)|
|Infrastructure<br>(neighborhood|Electricity|Lack of a direct electricityconnection|
|conditions)|Toilet|Lack of an improved toilet (anything other than<br>a flush toilet or improvedpit latrine|
||Water|Lack of a reliable water source (anything other<br>thanpiped water or apublic standpipe)<br>|
||Homeownership|Lack of ownershipof home<sup>16</sup>|

Poor housing conditions, particularly slums and informal housing are inextricably linked to urban poverty. For example, the quality of a household’s dwelling is one of the indicators used as a proxy means test to identify poor households when determining households most in need be eligible for welfare programs (Grosh and Baker 1995). In other words, housing quality is correlated with household welfare. The focus on living conditions and housing deprivations, moreover, are a means of determining the extent of the interaction between housing and poverty and how best to prescribe policy interventions to these

> 14 Variable categories of “other,” for example, are counted towards households facing a deprivation. The assumption is that if permanent materials, adequate infrastructure provision or ownership were present they would fall into a defined category. Responses noted as unknown or missing are not used in the analysis. Going forward, unless noted, types of shortages are indicated by whether or not they are present.

> 15 This definition of overcrowding is derived from UN-HABITAT and the Millennium Development Goals’ definition of a slum, which states that sufficient living space “means not more than three persons sharing a room.” Thus, this calculation divides the total household size by the number of rooms in the dwelling unit.

> 16 It is important to note that this definition applies strictly to whether or not people own their home. The answer choice for this variable is binary. Often tenure is examined as whether or not the household has tenure security, defined as a legally binding right to occupy their home. The implications of this particular definition are twofold: 1) we know little about the various forms of tenure that households in these samples face, including “informal” tenure situations; and 2) tenure shortage should only be defined as those who do not own their own homes, in the broad sense of the definition.

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