New Approach to Measure Urban Poverty: THE CASE OF NOUAKCHOTT Paper presented at the XXV111 International Population Conference,. Cape Town, South Africa 29 th of October- 4 th of November 2017 Dr. Osman Nour Arab Urban Development Institute (AUDI) August, 2017 1 / 18
New Approach to Measure Urban Poverty: THE CASE OF NOUAKCHOTT Dr. Osman Nour, Arab Urban Development Institute (AUDI) onour99@hotmail.com; onour@araburban.org I-Introduction and Objectives of the Study: Poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon is perhaps most revealed in urban areas. Urban Poverty is not only characterized by inadequate income, but also by lack of adequate asset base, dwelling, provision of public infrastructure. In addition access to social services such as education and health can be scarce. Poor urban households often suffer limited social safety nets, powerlessness within political system (UN Habitat, 2003). The most common quantitative approach to measure urban poverty alone can underestimate urban poverty, because it does not take into account the extra cost of urban living, such as housing, education, health, electricity, water, transport, and other services. Therefore, income alone cannot capture the many dimensions of urban poverty. Several poverty measure have been introduced to estimate urban poverty, such as "Unsatisfied Basic Needs" (UBN), "Income Poverty Line" (IPL), and others, based on various characteristics of household pertaining to its dwelling conditions, ownership of assets, demographic characteristics, educational level, and employment of household's members. Recently, the Arab Urban Development Institute (AUDI) and the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) have constructed an index to measure Urban Poverty. The main purpose of the index was to measure urban poverty in a simplified and straight forward manner through using short list of highly indicative variables. However, determining these variables require studying an exhaustive list of potential indicators and performing an in-depth 2 / 18
analysis of their indicative power. The methodology for determining the indicators for the UPI is composed of three main steps: (1) running a series of correlation tests, (2) selecting the most significant variables and, (3) performing econometric analysis to determine the weight of each variable. This new urban poverty measure considers poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon, and emphasizes the concept of deprivation and looks at absolute and relative poverty at the same time. The index tries to avoid the traditional measure of poverty through income poverty line. The new Urban Poverty Index is not only used to compare it with other poverty measures, but it can also be used to compare poverty level among the different districts of the city and among the various sectors, such as education, health, dwelling and economic situation. This advantage can help mayors, city officials, NGOs and related ministries in setting the priorities of interventions to reduce poverty, at the district, and at the sectoral levels. There are three main objectives for the present study. First, the study will determine the factors that are most correlated with urban poverty in order to construct an urban poverty index for Nouakchott. Secondly, the newly constructed index of urban poverty will be applied to Nouakchott Household Survey Data to measure urban poverty for the capital city and its nine districts. Finally, Nouakchott's UPI will be compared with income poverty index, to test of its validity. 2-Sources of Data: The data for the present study was collected and prepared by the National Statistical Department in Mauritania , using a well-designed long household questionnaire to permit the calculation of different poverty indices, for comparative purposes. The city of Nouakchott is subdivided into nine districts. The total sample size of 2700 households was distributed and weighed for the nine districts, proportional to the size of the population in each district(see Table1) 3 / 18
The percentages of weighted households range from 13% for Ksar district to 25% for Arafat district, which is the most densely populated area compared to other districts. The statistical unit is the household and it's members. The sample is well balanced from the gender perspective with 51% males to 49% females, and the same gender balance is maintained for most of the nine districts, with Sebkha registering a higher male to female ratio (55% males against 45% females).After the sample size in each neighborhood is determined, the households to be surveyed were selected randomly by the field supervisors. FIGURE 1: DISTRICTS OF NOUAKCHOTT AND THEIR SHARES IN THE SAMPLE DISTRICT NUMBER OF HH WEIGHTED NUMBER OF HH Teyarett 280 18,367 Ksar 200 13,554 Tefragh-Zeina 240 16,147 Toujounin 280 15,350 Sebkha 300 15,540 El Mina 480 22,113 Dar Naim 300 22,019 Arafat 380 25,068 Riad 240 14,268 TOTAL 2,700 162,424 3- Sample's Profile: a- Education : Nouachott's data show that 25% of the population had never been enrolled, a share that increases to 43% and 44% for El- Mina and Sabkha respectively. Inter-district discrepancies are more notable for lower levels of educational attainment. The illiteracy rate for Nouachott is 24%, with a high rate of 41% for El- Mina and Sebkha districts. On the other hand the percentage of those with university degree is as low as 4% for the city and this percentage reached 7% and 6% Teyarett and Tafrigh-Zeina. b- Work Status : Around 13% of Nouakchott's residents are salaried employees and 14% are self employed, with slight inter- district 4 / 18
discrepancies. The share of unemployed averages 9% for the city , reaching as low as 1% for Ksar district and as high as 14% for El- Mina district. The study shows that sales and service employees occupy the highest share (35%), followed by unskilled jobs ( 25%). Moreover,75% of the people work in private sector, versus 25% in the public sector. c- Health : Around 80% of Nouakchott's residents have no health insurance of any kind. This share increases to 90% for Sebkha and El-Mina and decreases to around 65% for Ksar and Trafragh- Zeina. The survey shows that 25% of the city's households don't have vaccination records for their children, a share that reaches 60% for El-Mina district. About 80% of births take place in public hospitals. About 40% of the households reported visiting physician for prenatal check-up, and another 40% go to certified nurse. Child deaths ( under five years) were reported for 8% of the households. d- Social connections : When the respondents were asked about the extent of a person's social network, they reported an average of two close friends. When the respondents were asked how many persons outside their households they can resort to for money in case of emergency, the average was around 1.5 with minimum inter-district fluctuations. Finally, when the respondents were asked about how many people turned to them for help in the past year, the average was uniformly around one. In conclusion, there seems to be weak support for the hypothesis that the size on one's social network is related to monetary poverty. e- Sources of information : Newspaper reading does not seem to be an established habit, as respondents reported reading the newspaper,show an average of only once per week. Listening to radio is a more common behavior, with 37% reporting that they did on a daily basis. Television is obviously the most established habit, with 67% of the households who reported watching it 5 / 18
every day. When the respondents were asked about their sources of information, around 60% mentioned their relatives, neighbors and friends, 49% mentioned the local market, and 16% mentioned the workplace. In terms of Media as a sources of information, television came first , with 70%,followed by the radio 60%, and newspaper and magazine with 40%, and worldwide web with 10%. 4- Methodology: The questionnaire for the present study is designed in a way that permits the calculation of different poverty indices, such as Unmet Basic Needs (UBN), Income poverty (IP), and Urban Poverty Index (UPI). The questionnaire is divided into three main sections as follow: a- General information about the household: This section includes demographic and socio- economic characteristics of household members and household size. b- Questions to construct UPI: This is the main section which includes the questions that are going to be scored to measure urban poverty c- Additional descriptive Questions: This section includes questions related to UBN categories, namely education, health, dwelling conditions, dwelling amenities, and economic situation. These questions do not enter into the scoring system, but they can be used to generate additional descriptive information on the household living conditions, and will be used to set the intervention priorities. The methodology to determine the indicators for the UPI for Nouakchott is composed of the following main steps: running a series of correlation tests, to select the most significant variables, and performing regression analysis to determine the weights for 6 / 18
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