Exploring Urban Basic Services And Coping Strategies: Evidence From Nigeria.

Abstract

This paper explores Urban Basic Services (UBS) and households coping strategies in emerging economies, particularly, in Nigeria, by investigating two complementary pieces of data: Households Coping Cost (HCC) and dissatisfaction with services. A mixed-method (quantitative and qualitative) research approach was applied to collect both primary and secondary data. The study dwells on literature review and from a survey of 450 sampled households in three settlements in Calabar Metropolis, Nigeria. The result indicates that most settlements had households without access to improved UBS. The empirical evaluation further shows the average imposing costs of 5% per month for water, 3.4% for sanitation and 5% on electricity as the HCC on UBS. The coping costs required by households in the low-income settlements were as thrice the bills paid to the utility agencies. Findings further show heterogeneity in coping strategies in the three settlements, in these differences were those households who live in high-income settlements that had their sources of water and electricity connected but only depend on the public sector for sanitation services. The paper recommends the need for providing improved UBS.