# **6. Conclusion**

In this paper, we have defined alternative means of measuring access that go beyond traditional measures of physical access to include functionality, use and service quality, adopting a more holistic understanding of services that mirrors the global transition from MDGs to SDGs. By drawing on a large data set of urban households in Kenya, we have demonstrated how these measures vary across sectors, and how to analyze and interpret these results.

The findings from our analysis have real implications for sectoral policies and infrastructure investments in Kenyan cities. Our data show that an infrastructure gap exists between formal and informal communities and non-poor and poor households. Poor households, and those who live in informal settlements suffer from lower levels of access, and fewer quality services. Interestingly, we find that the size of this gap is significantly larger by settlement type than poverty level. Or in other words, those who live in informal settlements, irrespective of poverty level, are more likely to have lower access to services – at nominal, effective or quality-adjusted levels. This suggests that policy makers in urban Kenya need to seriously examine the drivers of spatial inequality and find mechanisms for closing this gap. The existence of both coverage and quality deficiencies also implies that investment strategies should address both expansion as well as quality improvement in each sector.

Our data on service access by sector suggest that investment in water supply and sanitation is a high priority. Overall, these sectors perform poorly on a relative basis, and also have the largest service gap, which is particularly evident between formal and informal settlements. Delivery mechanisms will need to take into account the high rates of tenancy in informal settlements that can hinder service expansion. Finally, our data reveal that mean spending on infrastructure services is high. Cumulatively these expenses represent a significant part of the household budget. In relative terms, phone and electricity expenditures are high, while expenditures on water and garbage collection services are low. Non-poor households and those who live in formal settlements generally spend more for all services – possibly reflecting higher levels of consumption (rather than higher unit costs). Further investigation is recommended to understand the unit costs and relative affordability of each of these services.

Regressions analyses of rental data reveal that households place considerable value on access to infrastructure. In and of themselves, nominal infrastructure variables explain 40% of the overall variation in rents. By comparison, quality-adjusted infrastructure variables explain 55% of the variation in rents. Among the seven infrastructure services examined, the following four – electricity, water, toilets, and garbage collection – are associated with higher rents. Overall, rent paid by tenants is tied not only to the availability of basic infrastructure services (with higher rents paid for housing with access to services), but also to the quality of these services (that is, better quality services yielded even higher rents).

Our analysis also identifies key factors that contribute to a household’s likelihood of having access to infrastructure services. Household characteristics matter –infrastructure access is higher in households with higher income, male household heads, and more educated household heads. The location of the household and housing characteristics also matter. Larger and better-quality housing is associated with better access. Residents of certain types of housing are systematically more likely to have access. For example, residents of single-family housing are more likely to have access to private toilets and water connections than residents of compounds or dormitories. Residents of informal neighborhoods are systematically less likely to have access to service than those in formal neighborhoods. And there is also a city effect. Interestingly, access to any given infrastructure service is strongly correlated with the presence of other infrastructure services. Tenure status also influences infrastructure access, with renters more likely to have access to electricity, garbage collection and sewerage disposal services, but less likely to have either a private toilet or a private piped water connection.

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