Mobility, Poverty, and Gender: Travel ‘Choices’ of Slum Residents in Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

A survey of 4375 slum residents in Nairobi, Kenya, reveals that the majority cannot afford any of the motorized transport options in the city. They cope by limiting their travel outside their settlement and, if they do travel, by often ‘choosing’ to walk. As compared to the non‐poor, poor households are systematically worse off. But the burden of reduced mobility is borne disproportionately by women and children. Using joint‐choice modelling to empirically explore the travel ‘choices’ of Nairobi’s slum residents, we show that women, men, and children in this population face distinct barriers to access. We conclude that policy aiming to improve mobility and transport access for the poor needs to grapple not only with the crucial issue of affordability but also with specific constraints faced by women and children.

Acknowledgements

Data collection for this research was supported by the World Bank and Norwegian Trust Fund. The views expressed here are neither attributable to nor necessarily shared by the World Bank.

Notes

1. The exchange rate at the time of the survey in 2004 was Ksh 75 per US$. The official urban poverty line represents the cost of buying the amount of calories sufficient to meet a person’s recommended daily nutritional requirement (2250 calories) and minimal non‐food expenditures (e.g. clothes, primary school expenses such as uniforms). For a more detailed discussion, please see World Bank (2008).

2. In terms of household expenditure allocation, the data show that, on average, 59% is spent on food, 17% on rent, and 11% on transport; the median values are 53% on food, 14.6% on rent, and 6.7% on transport (World Bank 2006).

3. We also estimated nested logit model formulations, which take into account the fact that there might be correlation in the model’s error term between some of the alternatives. The nested logit results were not significantly different from the multinomial specification.