ujh78

5 Shelter Deprivation
This chapter focuses on two household characteristics: dwellings with mud floors and homes that
do not have electricity. The analyses included data on children up to 17 years of age.
5.1 Living in Houses with Mud Floors
The growing number and size of slums worldwide demonstrates that the slums are crucial
elements of contemporary urbanization in developing countries (Morakinyo et al., 2012). Over 640
million children in the developing world live in overcrowded homes or dwellings with mud floors
(UNICEF, 2005). Researchers have found an association in sub-Saharan Africa between living in houses
with mud floors and health and nutritional problems. Dumba et al. (2008) found in the Luweero district of
Uganda that, among children under age 5, living in a house with a mud floor was associated with the risk
of having helminth infection. Ainsworth and Semali (2000), studying children under the age of 60 months
in the Kagera region of Tanzania, found an association between a recent adult death in households with a
dirt floor and substantially higher child morbidity. Ainsworth and Semali also found that better housing
(e.g., having a concrete, tiled, or wooden floor instead of a dirt floor) was the only household-level
socioeconomic variable with a strongly positive relationship to children’s weight-for-height. Children in
households with concrete, wood, or tile floors had weight-for-height z-scores 0.2 SD higher than children
in households with dirt floors. Finally, a recent study by Mohammed and Tamiru (2013) in Arba Minch
Zuria, southern Ethiopia, found that children under five years old living in houses with mud floors were
more likely to have diarrhea than their counterparts living in houses with cement floors.
In sub-Saharan Africa the percentage of children under 18 years of age who lived in houses with
mud floors was very inconsistent, from 16% in Madagascar to 95% in Chad (see Map 5.1). In Burundi
and Ethiopia 9 of every 10 children lived in a house with mud floors (see Table 5.1). Three of every four
children lived in houses with mud floors in Malawi, Mali, Niger, Tanzania, and Uganda. More than half
of children in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zambia, as well, lived
in houses with mud floors.
Sex and geographic disparities
Generally, there were no child sex disparities related to living in a house with a mud floor (see
Figure 5.1). However, in four countries—Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia, and Tanzania—the percentage of
children living in houses with mud floors was about 2 percentage points higher for boys than girls (see
Table 5.1).
In every country the percentage of children living in houses with mud floors was higher in rural
areas than in urban areas (see Figure 5.2). This disparity reached more than 60 percentage points in
Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, and Namibia, and in Zambia the difference was 70 percentage points. In Burkina
Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Malawi, Niger, Tanzania, and Uganda as well, the difference exceeded 50
percentage points (see Table 5.1).
The role of the household head’s sex and age
In two-thirds of these sub-Saharan African countries, the percentage of children living in houses
with mud floors was higher for children living with a male rather than a female head of household (see
Figure 5.3). This difference was about 15 percentage points in four countries—Burkina Faso (male
household head: 60% and female household head: 44%), Guinea (56% and 40%), Nigeria (43% and
28%), and Senegal (41% and 22%) (see Table 5.1). The inverse appeared in Namibia, where the
percentage of children living in a house with mud floors was nearly 10 percentage points higher for
87