Gora Mboup

UN-HABITAT

Postal Address:P.O Box 30030-00100, Nairobi, Kenya

Telephone: 254-20-7625031

Fax: 254-20-7623080

E-mail: gora.mboup@unhabitat.org

The Proportion of urban population living in slums is the proportion of urban population living in slum households. A slum household is defined as a group of individuals living under the same roof lacking one or more1 of the following conditions:

• Access to improved water
• Access to improved sanitation
• Sufficient-living area
• Durability of housing
• Security of tenure

However, since information on secure tenure is not available for most of the countries, only the first four indicators are used to define slum household, and then to estimate the proportion of urban population living in slums.

Access to improved water:

Improved drinking water technologies are more likely to provide safe drinking water than those characterized as unimproved. A household is considered to have access to an improved water supply if it uses improved drinking water sources or delivery points (listed below).

Improved drinking water sources include: piped water into dwelling, plot or yard; public tap/standpipe; tube well/borehole; protected dug well; protected spring; and rainwater collection.

Unimproved drinking water sources include: unprotected dug well; unprotected spring; cart with small tank/drum; bottled water2 ; tanker-truck; and surface water (river, dam, lake, pond, stream, canal, irrigation channels).

Access to improved sanitation:

Improved sanitation facilities are more likely to prevent human contact with human excreta than unimproved facilities. A household is considered to have access to improved sanitation if it uses improved sanitation facilities (listed below).

Improved sanitation facilities3 include: flush or pour-flush to piped sewer system, septic tank or pit latrine; ventilated improved pit latrine; pit latrine with slab; and composting toilet.

Unimproved sanitation facilities include: flush or pour–flush to elsewhere4 ; pit latrine without slab or open pit; bucket; hanging toilet or hanging latrine; no facilities or bush or field.

Durability of housing: A house is considered “durable” if it is built on a non-hazardous location and has a structure permanent and adequate enough to protect its inhabitants from the extremes of climatic conditions, such as rain, heat, cold and humidity.

Sufficient living area: A house is considered to provide a sufficient living area for the household members if not more than three people share the same habitable (minimum of four square meters) room.

Secure tenure: Secure tenure is the right of all individuals and groups to effective protection by the State against arbitrary unlawful evictions. People have secure tenure when there is evidence of documentation that can be used as proof of secure tenure status or when there is either de facto or perceived protection against forced evictions.

Household survey data is preferred when available, such as the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) as well as other household data (surveys or censuses), are the preferred sources of data. When household survey data are available, the response categories for questions on access to water, access to sanitation, overcrowding, quality of dwelling and security of tenure are reviewed. Where possible, the response categories are grouped or interpreted according to Expert Group Meeting (EGM) definitions of slum dwellers (e.g., not all surveys or censuses use the same categories to define access to water and sanitation in the same way). Households that lack either of the above conditions are tallied ensuring that, a household lacking more than one condition is only counted once. Proportion of population living in these households is then estimated.

Defining a slum at the household level presents a compromise between theoretical and methodological considerations. The agreed-upon definition is simple, operational and pragmatic: it can be easily understood and adapted by governments and other partners; it offers clear, measurable indicators, provided as a proxy to capture some of the essential attributes of slums; and it uses household-level data that is collected on a regular basis by governments and non-governmental organizations, that is accessible and available in most parts of the world. However, this definition lacks the spatial component of slum as well as the type of shelter deprivation.

Four out of five of the slum definition indicators measure physical expressions of slum conditions: lack of water, lack of sanitation, overcrowded conditions, and non-durable housing structures. These indicators focus attention on the circumstances that surround slum life, depicting deficiencies and casting poverty as an attribute of the environments in which slum dwellers live. The fifth indicator – security of tenure – has to do with legality, which is not as easy to measure or monitor, as the tenure status of slum dwellers often depends on de facto or de jure rights – or lack of thereof. There currently exists no mechanism to monitor secure tenure as part of target 7D, as household-level data on property entitlement, evictions, ownership, and other indicators of secure tenure is not uniformly available through mainstream systems of data collection, such as censuses and household surveys.

Since the definition of slum was only adopted in 2002 and implemented in 2003 for global monitoring, national estimates are not available for comparison with global figures.

Estimated data for this indicator are obtained via the following process. Initially, a country Desk review of primary (published or electronic) sources is conducted. Data can then be obtained either from the country or from official international database publication such as Demographic and Health Survey-DHS (http://www.measuredhs.com) or Multiple Indicators Clusters Survey – MICS (http://www.childinfo.org) or Integrated Public Use Micro data Series –IMPUS (http://www.ipums.org), or national official database, or via CDs. Over 350 surveys and censuses have been obtained and used in the estimation of slum dwellers.

When household survey data were available the response categories for questions on access to water, access to sanitation, overcrowding, quality of housing and security of tenure are reviewed. In some instances it is possible to cross reference with alternative estimates or sources, or consult other countries with similar characteristics. Many countries in Africa and Asia have done DHS surveys more than once. When these data are available both data files are accessed as a confirmatory measure.

Estimations are produced only for countries with good quality household surveys or census data. Only those survey and census data that are well documented and considered valid are included in the estimation. Some surveys are not considered valid because their classification of facilities has inadequate detail or the categories are not comparable with other surveys. However, for global and regional estimates, missing data for countries are estimated based on the average of countries with data.

Regional and Global estimates are based on countries with available data. Individual country estimates are summed to regional and global totals.

Estimates are published in November 2008 in the UrbanInfor database that will be launched at the Fourth World Urban Forum.