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Republic of Namibia National Planning Commission Central Statistics Office ------------------------------------------------------------- Living Conditions in Namibia BASIC DESCRIPTION WITH HIGHLIGHTS The 1993/1994 Namibia Household Income and Expenditure Survey MAIN REPORT Table of Contents PREFACE ............................................................................................................................ 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................. 4 Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 32 Chapter 2: FACTS ABOUT THE SURVEY ................................................................ 33 Chapter 3: SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS ................................. 36 Chapter 4: EDUCATION .............................................................................................. 46 Chapter 5: ECONOMIC ACTIVITY ........................................................................... 54 Chapter 6: HOUSING AND INFRASTRUCTURE ................................................... 84 Chapter 7: ACCESS TO DURABLE/CAPITAL GOODS AND PROPERTY IN HOUSEHOLDS ............................................................. 120 Chapter 8: ECONOMIC STANDARD ......................................................................... 143 Chapter 9: HOUSEHOLD DISTRIBUTION OF CONSUMPTION AND EXPENDITURE .......................................................................................... 167 Chapter 10: WINDHOEK ................................................................................................ 217 Chapter 11: WALVIS BAY .............................................................................................. 241 Chapter 12: DOMESTIC WORKERS AND FARM WORKERS ............................... 265 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................... 286 2 PREFACE The 1993/94 Namibia Household Income and Expenditure Survey (NHIES) is the first module of the National Household Survey Programme endorsed by the Government in 1993. This programme is an integrated part of A Five-Year Development Plan of Statistics in Namibia . In October 1994, a prelimary report from the NHIES was published. This report was based only on the first three survey months of the data collection period. In November 1995, a special report from the NHIES titled “The distribution of economic resources in the population of Namibia” was published as a background document for the Namibian round-table conference in Geneva, Switzerland. This report was based on the full survey year. The present report is the main report from the NHIES. The main report provides a basic description of the living conditions in Namibia concerning economic activity, housing and infrastructure, possession of capital goods and property, economic standard as well as consumption and expenditure patterns. The statistics are disaggregated by important domains of study like the 13 regions, rural and urban areas, sex of head of household, main language, household composition, educational level, economic activity and main source of income. Separate chapters deal with Windhoek, Walvis Bay, domestic workers and farm workers. The Central Statistics Office will also publish a table report which provides statistics on household consumption and expenditure on the most detailed level collected in the NHIES. This report will only be published in the form of a diskette. There is also an administrative and technical report of the NHIES. The administrative and technical report and its annexes provide a detailed description of the administrative and technical details of the NHIES. The report is produced by the Survey and Cartographic Unit of the Central Statistics Office. The preparation and production of this report was supported by technical assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and from the Swedish International Development Agency under the executing agency of Statistics Sweden. The NHIES has been supported by various donors through bilateral and multilateral arrangements. On behalf of the Government of Namibia, I take this opportunity to thank the UNDP and the Government of Sweden for their valuable technical and financial support towards this project. I would also like to express my deep appreciation to our Government for its financial and material support. Finally, I wish to thank all those who contributed to the success of the NHIES project, and in particular, the user/producer reference group of the NHIES, the CSO staff who were involved in the NHIES activities as well as the households of the NHIES sample living all over Namibia without whose support and co-operation the NHIES would never have been possible. Sarah Kuugongelwa Director General National Planning Commission May 1996 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The purpose of this report is to highlight the living conditions of the Namibian people with the emphasis on the distribution of the economic resources among the Namibian households. In Namibia a lot of exchange of goods and services is done by bartering without money involved. The pure income concept used in developed countries is therefore less relevant. The living conditions of the households are heavily dependent on the volume of work performed by the household members. The socio-demographic characteristics of the households provide the basic background for welfare and consumer behaviour. Yield of work and dependence are influenced by education and health. Consumption and welfare are also dependent on infrastructure, housing and possession of durable goods. This report is divided into 12 chapters as described in the table of contents. This summary only deals with the first 9 chapters. The reader who is especially interested in statistics on the living conditions in Windhoek or Walvis Bay or the living conditions of domestic workers and farm workers are referred directly to chapter 10 - 12. THE NAMIBIAN ECONOMY Namibia faces the same legacy of apartheid as South Africa with an economy of extreme contrasts. Some of its main characteristics are A dualistic economy with a sophisticated modern sector that employs only a minority of the population. The economy is depending on a few natural resource based sectors, to a large extent capital intensive with little contribution towards increasing employment and reducing income inequality. Regarding the distribution of resources, there are vast disparities between a small, wealthy minority and a big majority of which many live below the poverty line. The Gross National Income (GNI) per capita amounted to N$ 6 958 (US$ 1 960) in 1994. This classifies Namibia as a middle income country. However, in a ranking by the so called Human Development Index, Namibia ranks much lower than by its GNI per capita and trails many countries with a lower GNI per capita. Although subsistence agriculture only contributes about 3-4 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) an estimated 35-40 percent of the employed population work there. Commercial agriculture by comparison contributes about 7 percent to the GDP and employs about 10 percent of all employed persons. It involves mainly livestock production, to a large extent exported to South Africa. The fishing industry has been rapidly expanding since Independence. The fish catches are to an increasing extent further processed in Namibia. Thus, the combined contribution to the GDP by fishing and fish processing has grown from 4.5 percent in 1990 to 8.6 percent in 1994. 4 Namibia is well endorsed with a variety of important minerals. The mining industry, although decreasing in relative importance, still contributes 10-15 percent to the GDP. However, the industry has had a minor effect on employment creation outside the mining itself. Manufacturing, except meat and fish processing, contributes only about 3.5 percent to the GDP. A striking feature of the structure of Namibia’s economy is that the total expenditure by government amounts to almost 40 percent of the GDP. Among the reasons behind the relatively high percentages of government is the need to establish and organise government in accordance with the new and democratic constitution. This had to be achieved in context with the constitutional agreement to keep all public sector personnel from the previous administration. Namibia’s economy has performed better since Independence than at any time since 1980. The average annual growth of the GDP since 1990 has been 4 percent. However, growth has been erratic with a substantial growth in 1991 and 1992 and a decline in GDP in 1993. Gross fixed capital formation has been on the average 21 percent of the GDP since Independence which is above the levels of the years prior to 1990. Although the colonial period left Namibia with a relatively well developed physical infrastructure it also left a large deficit in human capital (well educated and healthy people). More than 95 percent of the merchandise exports of goods are made up of products of Namibia’s primary industries and its related secondary industries, meat and fish processing. Most of the consumption goods and capital goods are imported, mainly from South Africa. Namibia has been a protected market for the manufacturing industry of South Africa. Since Independence, with the exception of 1994, Namibia’s terms of trade have been declining. THE POPULATION AND ITS ECONOMIC ACTIVITY Population The number of private