percent of the entire poor population in the country.<sup>4</sup> As reported in Batana et al. (2021), the poverty incidence in Kinshasa is likely to have risen since 2012.

Kinshasa has not been able to reach its full potential due to its disconnection from the global economy and unplanned urbanization. Cities may have several advantages by allowing people to be closer to jobs and generating economic opportunities and enhancing productivity due to agglomeration of economies. Public goods such as infrastructure and basic services can be provided more efficiently and equitably when populations are large and densely packed (World Bank 2018b). However, Kinshasa remains largely a local city—as opposed to a global city that is open to regional and global trade, markets, and investments—and it produces fewer internationally tradable goods and services (60 percent) than other world cities (Lall, Henderson, and Venables 2017).

Another feature characterizing the city is a proliferation of precarious areas, abandoned parts of urban Kinshasa that suffer from rough terrain, poor services, and various environmental/disaster risks. As described in Section 2, this paper defines neighborhoods are identified as precarious if they have characteristics that are not desirable for habitation. The expansion of precarious areas in Kinshasa is a rather recent phenomenon, instigated by the unprecedented population growth that the city has experienced over the past half century (Nzuzi 2017). Precarious areas concentrate particularly in newly built residential areas in suburban/peri-urban areas that lie mainly outside the 5 km radius around the city core. These precarious areas are home to roughly 60 percent of the Kinshasa population.<sup>5</sup> This paper aims to present new data on the spatial and demographic patterns of the city and the spatial and socio-economic variation in access to services. Key questions addressed in this note include: _what is the standard of living conditions in urban Kinshasa? How do access to infrastructure and basic services vary depending on households’ socio-economic characteristics and residential locations?_ In examining these questions, this paper briefly reviews the patterns of urban growth and proliferation of precarious neighborhoods in Kinshasa (Section 2). This paper then shows various aspects of living conditions of Kinshasa residents by their socio-economic characteristics and residential locations (Section 3). The paper also examines in Section 4 the degree to which spatial or demographic characteristics drives access to services, thereby shedding light on whether area-focused interventions or individual-interventions are needed to improve service outcomes. It identifies the areas of the city where investments are particularly needed. Finally, the analysis estimates the cost to poor households of getting housing with service provision and located near the economic core of the city.

Key findings are summarized as follows. First, worse living conditions are endured by poor and/or less educated households in precarious and/or peri-urban neighborhoods. Second, inequality in access to water is driven by locational factors, while sanitation access depends on household characteristics, such as the education levels of household heads. Third, while there is a concern about negative externalities from Kinshasa’s extremely high population and built-up density, poor households benefit from density to some extent, as indicated by a higher chance of their gaining access to basic services in dense neighborhoods. Finally, high housing costs in neighborhoods

> 4 The numbers of the poor in 2017 are simulated based on the projected population from the National Institute of Statistics ( _Institut National de la Statistique_ , INS).

> 5 Based on population estimates from WorldPop (2013).

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