Settlement and household survey report
SETTLEMENT AND HOUSEHOLD SURVEY REPORT
Introduction 3
Chapter 1 – Sampling methodology 7
1.1 Sample size 8
1.2 First stage sampling: food agents 10
1.3 Second stage sampling: households 11
1.4 The questionnaire 11
Chapter 2 – Settlements’ population 13
Chapter 3 - Settlements: needs in services and infrastructures 19
3.1 Settlement housing 19
3.2 Education 20
3.3 Health care 22
3.4 Social and community services 24
3.5 Agricultural services in the rural settlements 26
3.6 Water, electricity, sewage and roads 26
Chapter 4 – The demographic structure of the household 29
4.1 Age structure and dependency ratio 29
4.2 Demographic strength of households 32
4.3 IDP families 33
Chapter 5 – The literacy skills 35
Chapter 6 – The wealth of households 37
6.1 The employment structure 37
6.2 The livelihood of the household 40
Chapter 7 – Housing conditions 43
7.1 Buildings 43
7.2 Dwellings 45
7.3 Housing conditions 46
7.4 Adequacy of housing 47
7.5 Expectations 51
Chapter 8 - Urban - Rural – Collective towns 53
8.1 Household’s profiles 53
8.2 Housing conditions 54
Chapter 9 - Housing vulnerability 56
9.1 Economic profiles of the household 57
9.2 Demographic profiles of the household 64
9.3 Vulnerable households 70
Chapter 10 - Final recommendations 73
10.1 Policy review 75
Appendix A: 79
S&H Survey Team 79
Appendix B 80
Introduction
Within the framework of Habitat’s activities in Northern Iraq it is of fundamental importance to collect information about the socioeconomic conditions of this area. This information is needed for policy purposes: (i) to improve the implementation of humanitarian programs related to local population needs and therefore to a more adequate identification of target population, (ii) for higher understanding and evaluation of possible impacts of humanitarian action on overall socioeconomic conditions of this area, (iii) for a more precise definition of social domains and geographical areas where to prioritize Habitat’s project allocation and to measure policy performance.
In recent years Habitat has developed many activities that have assisted the Agency in defining its delivery system (turnkey houses, shelter packages, infrastructure and watsan projects and other forms of structural intervention). The single items of this delivery system were defined on the basis of the community work developed by field teams, that were constantly in contact with the major stakeholders of local population such as local representatives and specific social profiles like widow headed families, IDPs, refugees, poor urban people. During the year 2000 a survey was carried out on IDP sites and households, it was the first attempt of addressing the problem in target population analysis and definition in a more ‘scientific’ way. As well as this survey other studies were started (rural area, identity groups and housing typologies analyses). With the ‘Household and Settlement Survey’ Habitat wants to continue this more systematic approach based on surveying methods and techniques, aimed at producing a first important step toward the setting up of a permanent monitoring system that will answer questions posed by policy makers.
Such questions may be related to the following areas of policy concern:
- what proportion of local population can be considered vulnerable and therefore in need of external assistance within the framework of humanitarian programs;
- in this context how should a housing policy effect local population living conditions in an area where housing problems can not be easily identified, in the sense that problems like lack of housing (homelessness) or substandard housing are probably less visible and thus understandable as in other poor areas of the world;
- how can the housing problem be related to other typical problems of this area such as low level of activity, fall in traditional agricultural activities and general household vulnerability that is most likely to affect a whole generation of local population in terms of loss of farming (and related) skills;
- how can resettlement programs that are now in progress help to improve the living conditions of local population not only by increasing the existing housing stock, but also by effecting local economy through building activities and improving the methods of governance;
- what criteria and leading ideas can be first developed and then applied in order to understand what could be the optimal spatial distribution in allocating housing and infrastructure projects and what type of criteria can be applied in defining urban and rural area allocations.
The Settlement and Household Survey (from now on S&H Survey) is therefore supposed to collect information that will help Habitat in answering a very wide range of possible questions of policy and planning concerns with reference either to settlements structure (first part of the survey) or to households and population features (second part).
The S&H Survey was planned to be completed in the first half of the year 2001. Instead the work started at the beginning of February with the planning phase, while the data collection phase went from April to the first decade of July, while checks on the accuracy of the data were carried out in the mean time and immediately after. To the data collection phase have participated 40 surveyors (10 in Duhok, 10 in Erbil, and 20 in Sulaimaniyah), 3 supervisors (one for each Field Office), 4 data checkers (1 in Duhok, 1 in Erbil, and 2 in Sulaimaniyah), and 8 data entry (2 in Duhok, 2 in Erbil, and 4 in Sulaimaniyah). The selection of 3 supervisors was necessary to facilitate the implementation and coordination of the survey in the three Field Offices. The 3 supervisors were the focal points to report the activities to the Core Office; according to their reports the logistic/administrative tasks were accomplished through a homogeneous activities’ coordination.
The analyses regarded a quite large range of subjects even though, as far as the part about NI households is concerned, the priority has been given to topics related to housing conditions of North Iraqi population mainly with the aim of describing those social groups that are in greater need of assistance and policy.
The first chapter outlines the survey methodology: that is the statistical criteria followed in choosing the sample and the way in which these criteria were implemented in the field when the settlements’ representatives and the households were interviewed.
In chapters 2 and 3 the data about the settlements are analyzed. In the chapter 2 it is described briefly the size of the settlements in terms of number of inhabitants and dwellings, according to the information provided by the Local Authorities, whereas in chapter 3 the study focuses on the needs in services and infrastructures (schools, hospitals, roads etc.), being the minimum unit of observation and analysis each of the three typologies of settlements (urban, rural or collective towns) in each governorate.
All of the following chapters of the report concentrate on data produced by the second part of the S&H Survey, namely the household questionnaire. The single parts of the analytical path explained in each chapter are defined in such a way that they approach the final objective of this research, that is to produce a coherent picture of housing conditions and in particular reliable estimates of vulnerable groups in this area.
The chapter 4 analyzes demographic structure of the area: the average household and family size, population divided by age and sex, the incidence of vulnerable people (children, elderly, disables) that are taken into consideration with the objective to provide a fair enough estimate (indicator) of household vulnerability from a demographic viewpoint so as to distinguish between strong household’s structure and weak household’s structures.
The chapter 5 analyses the level of literacy skills of the members of the households. In a population so young as is the one of Northern Iraq more than a quarter of the individuals are of a schooling age. It is important to know how many of them are attending school and how many for one reason or another choose to quit studying.
In the chapter 6 the study moves to the economic status of the households and their livelihood. In the first part an accurate description is given of working conditions of the sample population, while the second attacks the problem of the household income, looking not only to the sources of income, but also to the patterns of expenditure, level of family assets and type of financial assistance supplied by local authorities, international organizations or others. The information about the economic status combined with the information about the demographic structure and the literacy skills of households allow us to estimate the level of resilience of the household and to appraise their coping capacity against the hazard events that they may become exposed to.
In the chapter 7 the housing conditions of the families are analyzed. Therefore, our attention will be focused on the typologies and dimensions of the dwellings, the standard and the quality of the available services and the level of overcrowding of the housing units. The purpose of this investigation is to provide a first estimate of the number of people living in inadequate (sub-standard) housing conditions.
In the chapter 8 we address the problem of different social and housing profiles of the three groups of population: those that are settled in urban areas, those that are living in collective towns and those that are living in rural territories. The poverty line in urban, collective or rural areas may change because of the different purchasing power of households’ income. The same applies to housing conditions (a lack of facilities as electricity or toilet in urban areas is much worse than in rural areas). In this chapter we try to make the reader more aware of this differences and to go over the appearance of greater concentration of housing disruptions in rural areas.
In the chapter 9 we tried to get to a synthesis on the matter of housing vulnerability. The population of the sample will be classified in accordance to three major criteria: housing adequacy of the dwelling, demographic strength and economic wealth status of households. This final part is mostly directed to yield some orientate results on important matters of policy concern.
Finally, the chapter 10 contains some recommendations and suggestions provided by the light of the results of the survey.
Chapter 1 – Sampling methodology
The S&H Survey is addressed to households and to settlements. Due to the size of statistical population (655,000 households and more than 6,000 settlements[1]) a sample methodology had to be applied to both: households and settlements. While household samples were chosen on the basis of a sampling procedure as defined below, settlements were sampled in such a way that only those settlements were chosen where at least one household sample was located. This made the settlement sample decrease in size: large settlements with a consistent number of household samples are all represented, while the smaller the settlement the lower the chance of a household sample being located in and thus the settlement being selected.
Besides this a list of urban settlement was produced in order to make sure that all urban settlements would be covered. We defined urban settlements not on the basis of administrative units distribution but simply looking at the socio-economic profile of the settlement. Settlements were classified as urban where urban type activities were found. Thus only 33 urban settlements were identified.
Settlements were divided in three categories: urban, collective towns and rural. Due to the applied sampling methods all urban settlements were covered, while collective towns at 30.6%; rural settlements are represented by a very small sample for which very little statistical significance can be claimed. Therefore for rural settlements the collected data can be considered as indicative as they must be completed in the future either using other data sources or by an extension of present survey to a more statistically significant sample of settlements. While this applies to settlement data it is needles to say that household data in rural areas are not affected by problems of statistical significance since they have been selected on a random base.
After accessing the sampling methodologies used by other household surveys in this area in recent years by different UN agencies and other institutions, a two-stage cluster random sample was identified and used for the S&H Survey. Sampling was designed to be carried out on WFP lists of population and food agents (WFP Food Ration database). These were considered, at the moment of launching the survey, the most unbiased lists that could be used for our sampling problem, since the objective of the survey team was to produce a sample that would be as much random as possible, in order to avoid problems of over or under representation of specific categories within the social structure of NI population.
At the first stage of cluster sampling, a list of 640 WFP food agents was produced according to the sample size defined (see below). As stated by WFP service standards the food agents are requested to be scattered throughout the territory since they should be accessible to local population within an area of walking distance. This does not mean that the food agents are evenly distributed in spatial terms. They are primarily concentrated in urban areas or in large settlements.