Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 1997, volume 24, pages 889-902

A comparison of original owners and inheritors in housing supply and extension in Kumasi, Ghana

A G Tipple Centre for Architectural Research and Development Overseas, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, England; e-mail: a.g.tipple@ncl.ac.uk

D T Korboe Department of Housing and Planning Research, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana; e-mail: planning@ust.gn.apc.org

G D Garrod Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, England; e-mail: guy.garrod@ncl.ac.uk Received 27 August 1995; in revised form 20 October 1996

Abstract. After a survey of 1022 households in Kumasi, the commercial centre for forest Ghana, the authors examine the characteristics of house owners and their accommodation. In particular they focus on the differences between owners who originally built the houses and those who have inherited them. They challenge the current orthodoxy that it is more expensive to become an owner now than it was in the past but demonstrate that ownership is achieved relatively late in life. In addition, owners have much lower incomes than current formal sector house prices would imply. They also demon­strate that owners who built are better off than their inheritor counterparts. Thus, inheritance passes ownership rights in Ghana to lower income households. Extenders differ very little from nonextenders. The provision of housing finance should increase the efficiency of housing supply in Kumasi.

1 Introduction 1.1 Owning or renting There is a small but increasing literature on urban housing supply in developing countries. We are beginning to understand the logistics of construction or purchase, the process towards realising ownership, and the differences between owners and non-owners (for example, Gilbert, 1993; Tipple and Willis, 1991). The literature on housing tenure in developing countries [well summarised in Gilbert's review (UNCHS, 1989)] points out that, although renters are present in every income group, lower income households are the least likely to own an urban house. In addition, they are likely to be younger, less well established in the city, and have smaller households.

There is also some evidence that building is more difficult in the early 1990s compared with the heyday of squatter invasions in the 1960s and 1970s, or when the relatively large sites and services schemes were implemented in the 1970s. At that time, ownership could be obtained relatively cheaply or for no monetary cost apart from a few bribes. All that was needed for many was a stout heart or a modicum of cunning to resist, outwit, or bribe police and local authority inspectors. Now, however, as land peripheral to the city is more commonly bought and sold on the market, invasion is less of an option and the large state-sponsored sites and services schemes are few and far between (Amis and Lloyd, 1990; Gilbert, 1993). In addition, structural adjustment in economies, and rising aspirations are leading to increased real building costs. It is, thus, thought to be more difficult for a would-be owner to obtain a house as he or she must invest time and energy in dealing with contractors, local authorities, and infrastructure agencies rather than applying for a ready-built house or one to build under assisted conditions with finance on easy terms. We would expect, therefore, that

890 A G Tipple, D T Korboe, G D Garrod

recent builders would be considerably better off than non-recent extenders not only in having higher incomes, but also in having less onerous household arrangements (including higher per capita incomes) to allow increasingly heavy (and probably unpre­dictable) building costs to be borne.

In this paper, we are able to examine the characteristics of householders who own houses in one city in the developing world, Kumasi in Ghana. In doing so, inter alia, we explore these expectations from the literature with respect to our data on recent builders. As there seems to be a perception among Ghanaians that housing is becom­ing much more expensive relative to income as the years pass, it would be reasonable to hypothesise that recent builders are wealthier than long-standing owners.

1.2 House extensions In response to this evident difficulty of developing houses from scratch, we have developed a growing interest in the extension of houses as a means of housing supply. Extension of houses is part of what is referred to as the housing-adjustment process. A few studies have been carried out in industrialised countries to determine why, when faced with a need for housing adjustment, people extend or improve the existing house rather than move to another house (Gosling et al, 1993; Seek, 1983; Ziegert, 1988).(1)

The literature on increases in housing consumption, whether by moving or improv­ing, suggests that income, status, and financial commitments are important determinants (for example, Kirwan and Martin, 1972; Seek, 1983) though income is not always statis­tically significant in the analyses (Ziegert, 1988). Furthermore, McCarthy (1976) found that, within life-cycle stages, income has little or no effect on housing consumption, though McLeod and Ellis (1982) found that household income had a positive effect on per capita space consumption. Studies of extensions, mainly from industrialised coun­tries, suggest that income and wealth generally only affect the extension in an enabling or disabling role. This means that, where other variables influence the decision to extend, adequate income or wealth to carry out the job are required (Seek, 1983). Ziegert (1988) found that wealth (an amalgam of the discounted value of the pre-extension house and household income) was an important determinant of whether a household made an extension or not. However, in the decision about how extensive (or expensive) the extension should be, wealth was not a significant determinant.

In previous work on Ghana, we found that the housing stock in Kumasi was increasing parallel with population growth but largely through the efforts of extenders rather than builders of new housing (Malpezzi et al, 1990). In this paper we examine household characteristics such as size and income against their propensity to extend in the Kumasi context.

1.3 Inheriting ownership There is also some interest in the way inheritance redistributes housing goods and whether it is progressive or regressive. We know of no studies on the effect of inher­itance on homeownership in developing countries but Hamnett (1991) found that inherited housing in the United Kingdom tends to pass to the relatively well off. The UK house owners of the last generation tended to be relatively well educated and well-to-do and their heirs are mainly middle aged (67% are over 40) and relatively prosperous. In this paper we examine whether inheritance of housing in Kumasi redistributes wealth to lower income groups. Finally, some policy issues are suggested to assist in increasing the efficiency of housing supply in Kumasi.

(1) Improving can be likened to moving house while standing still, reinforcing the idea that the decision to extend is likely to be explained in the same terms as residential mobility (Gosling et al, 1993).

Comparison of owners and inheritors in housing in Kumasi 891

1.4 The survey of supply issues In the summer of 1993, the Centre for Architectural Research and Development Overseas of the University of Newcastle uponTyne and the Department of Housing and Planning Research, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, collaborated in conducting a housing-supply survey in Kumasi with a sample size of 1022. We targeted areas in which new building was being carried out but excluded those areas where the small elite were building magnificent houses. Four subsamples were selected: renters (num­bering 311 in the sample), owners of houses built or being built since 1987 (called recent builders in this paper, n = 184), owners of long standing who had extended since 1987(2) (recent extenders, n = 180), and owners of long standing who had not extended their houses since 1987 (non-recent extenders(3), n = 347). These subsamples represent the two sides of important dichotomies in housing-strategy choices: rent or own, extend or do not extend.

The survey was carried out under a project entitled "Housing the Poor Majority in Ghana: Evidence from Current Activity" sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust. It was important, therefore, that we surveyed those areas where low-income households were being housed. Past experience of Kumasi (Malpezzi et al, 1990; Tipple, 1984; 1987; Tipple and Willis, 1989; 1991; Willis and Tipple, 1991; Willis et al, 1990) showed that Ghanaian cities tend not to be sharply segmented by class and income but that low-income households could be found in all but the most expensive housing. Thus, our survey areas covered most classes of housing, only the most expensive being excluded. The income and wealth profiles of the sample show that we were reasonably successful in targeting the low to moderate income majority.

2 Housing in Kumasi The urban housing stock in Ghana is characterised by privately owned compound houses. In Kumasi these are commonly single-storey structures built in roughly a 30-metre square with three sides consisting (when complete) of between 10 and 15 rooms, mostly facing inwards onto a rectangular communal courtyard. The fourth side usually consists of kitchen, bathroom, and toilet facilities. This house form may also be constructed in two-storey or three-storey versions with a staircase in the courtyard giving access to galleries. These are especially common along main streets and in central areas. Within compounds, all households tend to share whatever bath­rooms and toilets are provided.(4) Less common are the smaller self-contained villas or bungalows, and blocks of self-contained apartments. Compounds form 57% of the stock in Kumasi according to Malpezzi et al (1990); the remainder are villas or blocks of apartments in multioccupation.

Households occupy rooms in compounds as owners, or family members who have their own room but pay no rent, or as rent-paying tenants. The split among the three tenure groups is roughly in the proportion 10:25:65, with virtually all of the last two groups having only a single room per household. Previous work (Tipple and Willis, 1991) shows that there is less difference between tenure groups in the compounds than between compound dwellers and those who live in self-contained premises, the latter having higher incomes and enjoying more space and better facilities.

(2) This date was chosen as five full years before the survey. As building operations take several years in Ghana, a relatively long period was adopted to represent 'recent'. (3) We could have called them recent nonextenders but we feel that it is less confusing when deciding on an abbreviation to have the negative first to emphasise that the group comprises those long-standing owners who are not 'recent extenders'. (4) About one third of houses appear to have no tap and a similar number have no toilet, so households in these are forced to use public water points and/or toilets.

892 A G Tipple, D T Korboe, G D Garrod

Compound houses are large structures and might be expected to be a very costly undertaking. However, we will see below that compounds have a mean cost of less than 04 million (£4000) so that ratios of house cost to annual income of three to five are central within the range expected in developing countries (World Bank, no date).(5)

Current supply of housing relies on a minority of individuals being willing to house the large majority, sometimes for free and usually for rents which are well below notional market levels (Malpezzi et al, 1990). Although our earlier research pointed to houses being completed before being occupied (Tipple, 1984), current practice is for compound houses to be built incrementally a few rooms, or one side of the square, at a time. Although compounds tend to be built with only a passing nod at the building regula­tions and utilising cheaper informal sector artisans, villas are commonly large, tend to be built to official specifications, are serviced to a higher standard, and, therefore, cost more per room—with a mean of 01.7 million (£1700). There is no established mechanism for building small houses on small plots as is conventional in much of Sub-Saharan Africa; plots are a consistent size—roughly 30 m x 30 m or 25 m x 40 m(6)

and social pressures dictate that the house should be large and suitable for accommo­dating extended family members (and, therefore, costly) rather than small and simple (and, therefore, cheap).

The implicit assumption in literature on house ownership, moving, and improving, is that owners buy and sell housing as an adjustment process, but this is not realised in all housing markets around the world. In fact, in a number of developing countries houses are seldom bought or sold. One such country is Ghana where the reasons are cultural and religious; land and other real property being the birthright of succeeding generations, rather than being at the disposal of the living (Tipple, 1984; 1987).

The motives underlying contemporary house building in urban areas in Ghana have been examined briefly by Tipple and Willis (1992) and Korboe (1993). The most important reason for building seems to be the provision of security for the owner's old age and for his or her heirs, but there is also an element of conspicuous consumption which has long been part of the predominant Akan culture (McCaskie, 1986), part of what Price (1974) refers to as the 'bigman' syndrome. In addition, motives for building are thought to include fulfilment of cultural obligations to house extended family relatives; and for funereal purposes as a context within which a person's remains can be laid out and through which they can be respected in death (Korboe, 1992). It is less clear whether there is any investment element in housing other than for earning rents from tenant households. However, long years of rent control, only recently relaxed through neglect rather than on purpose, have reduced the income-earning potential of housing to a fraction of its construction cost (Korboe, 1993; Malpezzi et al, 1990).

3 Household characteristics of owners and renters Previous work of ours (Korboe, 1993; Malpezzi et al, 1990; Tipple, 1984; 1987; Tipple and Willis, 1989; 1991) and others (Ghana, 1989) provide some expectations of house­hold characteristics. Mean age of household heads in urban Ghana (outside Accra) is 42 for male heads and 45.5 for female (Ghana, 1989). Households in the sample would, therefore, be expected to be relatively settled in the city. They would also be expected to be relatively immobile in their residence, with lengths of stay in the house varying from 19 years for owners to 10 years for renters (Malpezzi et al, 1990).

(5) It must be noted, however, that the indicator of house price to income used by the World Bank is for a dwelling unit whereas houses in Ghana constitute the equivalent of several dwelling units. Thus, the occupants of our sampled houses probably have very low ratios of house cost to income. (6) Recently, chiefs have been letting land in 25m x 30m plots to increase revenue from dwindling reserves.

Comparison of owners and inheritors in housing in Kumasi 893

Households in Ghana tend to be larger and more complex than in Europe and North America but not particularly large for Sub-Saharan Africa. The Ghana Living Standards Survey (Ghana, 1989) found urban households outside Accra to have a mean of 4.7 persons. This conforms with means in our 1980 and 1986 surveys of Kumasi (Malpezzi et al, 1990; Tipple, 1984; 1987; Tipple and Willis, 1991). However, even within this mean of 4.7, only a minority can be expected to be simple nuclear family house­holds; Sanjek (1982) found 45% in Adabraka, Accra. Many households would have extended family (abusua)a>> members and even independent adults who might be friends, employees, co-workers, or co-villagers.

Occupancy rates have been found to be high in Kumasi with a mean of 3.3 persons per room citywide in both 1980 (Tipple, 1984; 1986; 1987), and 1986 (Malpezzi et al, 1990; Tipple and Willis, 1989; 1991). Incomes are less readily predictable as there have been very high levels of inflation during the 1980s (the consumer price index increased twenty-fold during the decade). However, mean household incomes (consumption) of about £1000 a year(8) could be expected from Malpezzi et al's data from 1986. In common with our earlier work, income data were collected with expenditure as a proxy. The reasons for this are explained by Tipple (1984) and Malpezzi et al (1990).

As can be seen in table 1, the groups are related in the expected manner but not in a very marked way. Owners have higher household incomes than renters, though their per capita incomes are lower [see Tipple and Willis (1991) for similar results]. Renters are less well established in the city, their houses, and their employment (but are by no means transient). Also they have smaller households, occupy fewer rooms, and endure higher occupancy rates. Recent extenders and non-recent extenders are very similar in socioeconomic characteristics. Although we could have no a priori expectation that extenders would have higher incomes, they need to have had some spare for investment in more housing. However, our data show them to have very similar income to non-recent extenders. In addition, although they have more rooms for their households to occupy, they have not achieved better occupancy rates than nonextenders because of their larger households.

Table 1. Summary characteristics (means) of owners and renters in Kumasi.

Renters Recent Recent Non-recent builders extenders extenders

Age of head (years) Length of stay in Kumasi (years) Length of current employment (years) Length of stay in current house (years) Household size Number of rooms occupied Occupancy rate Household annual income (£" million)a

Per capita annual income (0 thousand)3 314 279 219 (249) 241 (273) Note: All recent builders are also original owners in this context. Figures in parentheses are for original owners only. a 01000 = £1 at the time of the survey.

(7) As marriage is exogamous to lineages, partners in a marriage are members of separate abusua. (8) The UN International Comparisons Programme (ICP) equalises prices internationally using the concept of an 'international dollar'. This gives purchasing power parity (PPP) between countries. PPP for Ghana increases the value of a cedi by about 2.6 times, converting the estimate of GDP per capita of US $400 to $1016 (PPP).

39 18 10 8 5.2 1.4 4.2 1.2

48 30 17 5 7.9 4.2 2.6 1.8

54 (55) 37 (35) 22 (21) 20 (13) 8.4(9.1) 3.3 (3.9) 3.1 (2.7) 1.4(1.7)

56 (57) 39 (37) 23 (24) 21 (15) 7.6 (8.1) 3.0 (2.6) 3.1 (2.7) 1.5 (1.7)

894 A G Tipple, D T Korboe, G D Garrod

Recent builders are also different from renters and generally in the same way as owners except, of course, for length of stay in their current house.(9) In household income, recent builders are more different from renters than the other owners; in per capita income they resemble renters more than the others. The differences we have found between recent builders and other owners were also as expected: the former are younger, have been in Kumasi and their employment for fewer years, are relatively new to their house (of course), have more rooms, but similar household size. The differences in income are slightly less marked than might be expected, but there are statistically significant differences from other groups in values for lengths of stay and household income for recent builders. Incomes of recent builders are relatively low to be investing in houses, at only £1800 per annum per household and £280 per annum per capita.

3.1 Variables affecting the scale of extensions In a two-step econometric analysis described elsewhere (Garrod et al, 1994), we attempted to estimate a linear model for the likelihood that a household would extend and the cost of the extension. Variables representing income, age, length of stay in the house in Kumasi and in work, size and type of house before extension, education, ethnic group, whether the owner has another house in Kumasi, and area of Kumasi occupied, were selected to reflect the relationships specified in a model modified from Mendelsohn (1977). A probit model was run to test the influence of these variables on a binary dependent variable: whether the house has been extended since 1987 or not. The model was estimated using LIMDEP 5.1 (Greene, 1989) and correctly predicted 75% of the extension decisions. The most important variables in correct prediction were small size of the original house (1 or 2 rooms and 3 or 4 rooms), whether the owner was nonlocal (non-Akan), had originally built the house (rather than inherited it), and had another house in the city. Owners of compounds and villas were less likely to extend than those owning multistorey compounds (which allow upward extension). Income (in this case per capita) had extremely slight negative influence.

Data on the 72 extenders which the first stage of the model retained for analysis were used to model spending on extension; the inverse Mills ratio X was used to counter any possible sample selection bias. The model explained about 44% of the variation in the dependent variable (extension cost) which was regarded as satisfactory given the data available.

One of the most influential variables was found to be income difference: the differ­ence between the annual income of the household and the mean annual income of other households in the area. The relationship was positive, indicating that the more a household's income exceeds the mean of the area, the more it will spend on the extension. The other influential variables included age and the number of rooms existing before extending. The former reflects the likelihood that pension lump-sum payments have triggered extension activity or that the next generation have started to contribute to common housing provision. The relationship between the latter and spending on the extension is negative, indicating that housing stress(10) is a motive for extending; the fewer rooms that were available before extension, the more was spent on any extension.

Our previous work on housing in Kumasi has given grounds to doubt the expectation that building is now more difficult than in the past because of the

(9) Many of them had moved into the new house which is, through the sampling process, less than six years old. (10) As one of the authors explains elsewhere (Korboe, 1993), the stress created by extended family demands is often a powerful reason for extending. As can be seen in table 3, extenders have significantly higher numbers of resident family members (abusuafo).

Comparison of owners and inheritors in housing in Kumasi 895

commercialisation of land. Such commercialisation is not a feature of Ghanaian land and housing markets, especially in Kumasi. The greater household incomes of recent builders in our data are statistically significant (at the 5% level) from other groups but not very much greater in monetary terms.

4 Household characteristics excluding inheritors Before we can make any credible conclusions as to whether recent builders are or are not different from non-recent extenders, and that any differences betray increasing difficulties and expenses in developing houses, we should make sure that all our owners are on the same footing, that is, that all have paid for their houses.

In order to do this, we divide the sample into subsets according to whether the household actually provided the resources for the house (usually by building but in rare cases through buying). The non-recent extenders who originally built their house, recent extenders who originally built their house, and recent builders, are categorised as 'original owners'. Non-recent extenders who inherited their house and recent extenders who inherited their house are categorised as 'inheritors'. Renters are kept separate.

At some points in the discussion we have also separated the recent builders who still live in their old accommodation (n = 44) from those (n = 140) who have moved into the new house. It is obvious that those still in the old house will not display the housing characteristics of those who moved into the new and can thus illustrate such issues as how far typical households might improve their housing by building, and whether recent builders who have not moved in are similar to inheritors in their characteristics. Where we have divided recent builders thus, we include the total mean in the first line of the table cell and the two means for the subgroups below.

Of the 44 recent builders who have not yet moved in, 25% own the old house and might not be expected to move into the new one at all. Six out of the 11 currently live in villas and almost all (10) are building a villa rather than a compound or an apartment block. Of all the recent builders who are building villas, 22 have not moved in and 10 of them are owners of their old house. First, we examine the renters and original owners only.

Table 1 shows that many of the differences between owners and renters become more pronounced when only original owners are included (the numbers in paren­theses). At the means, original owners are, therefore, considerably older than renters (at least 9 years), have larger households (by at least 2.6 persons), occupy about three times as many rooms, and have at least 1.4 persons per room fewer. Their household income is at least half a million cedis a year (£500) more. Other variables show less difference when only original owners are included; their length of stay is more similar, both in Kumasi and in the house, and their per capita incomes differ less. However, the differences between established owners and recent builders appear to be less marked overall when inheritors are excluded. Recent builders are more like other owners and less like renters when only original owners are considered.

Among original owners, extenders are markedly different from non-recent extenders only in their larger household size: the largest of any group. In the remainder of the variables, they remain very similar to each other. The similarity of occupancy rates between recent extenders and non-recent extenders shows that one effect of the extensions is to compensate for larger households. Undoubtedly, one of the motivators for extension will be the need for more room for the main household/1!)

(U) Table 3 (see over) shows that the extra 1.0 persons at the mean is contributed to by 0.4 extra children and 0.6 extra abusua members.

896 A G Tipple, D T Korboe, G D Garrod

5 Comparison of original owners and inheritors Housing in central Ghana is traditionally inherited by the members of the deceased owner's abusua as tenants in common. The eldest male takes the chief responsibility for the house as abusua panyin (head of the family) but he is only the first among equals in rights of occupancy and duties to maintain. Though there are laws which have attempted to change this, at least for intestate succession (Tipple, 1987), the last seven years since their promulgation have shown that tradition tends to win over modernity because the majority of succession cases are still determined out of court.

A priori, inheritors could be expected to have a wider range of socioeconomic characteristics than owners because they would be expected to be a more random cross-section of the population than people capable of building a house. At one extreme, some would be expected to be typical renters and unable to own a house through their own efforts. At the other extreme, some would be expected to be owners of another house or incipient owners even before they had the windfall of inheritance. Once they had inherited, they may still strive to own in their own right or they may not bother, content to live rent-free in a family house.(12) These two extremes may be expected to display similar characteristics to renters and original owners, respectively.

In table 2, owner-household heads in general can be seen to be about ten years older than average for household heads in urban Ghana (see section 3) and original owners can be seen to be slightly older than inheritors. However, the original owners have fewer years in town and in their current house than inheritors. This appears to stem from the tendency for ownership to come at a younger age for inheritors than for those who provide their own housing. In addition, inheritors tend to be already resident in the houses. In our survey we pick up only inheritors who are actually in the house but there will be others who live elsewhere. Although there are acknowledged 'rules' of inheritance which favour all heirs equally, those who are already resident are likely to benefit from residence rights more than the absentees (Amole et al, 1993). Thus, inheritors in our survey are likely to be well established in the house even before inheriting it.

Table 2. Measures of settlement (means) in the city for original owners, inheritors, and renters in Kumasi.

Original owners Inheritors Renters

non-recent recent recent non-recent recent extenders extenders builders3 extenders extenders who who who who originally originally n e w ° ^ inherited inherited built built

Age of head (years) 57 55 48 55 52 49 45

Length of stay in town 37 35 30 42 40 (years) 30 30

Number of years 24 21 17 21 22 in current employment 17 16

Number of years 15 13 5 27 29 in current house 2 15

a Data are included for the majority who have moved into the new house and the who are still in the old house.

(12) The pros and cons of family house occupation are discussed by Amole et al (1993) and Korboe (1992).

Comparison of owners and inheritors in housing in Kumasi 897

If we examine recent builders, they appear to have reached a similar stage to other original owners at the time they built. If each is taken to have moved in when building was complete (or at a comparable stage in the building process), all groups appear to have moved in aged early to mid-40s, after 20-25 years in town and 10-15 years in employment.

As we can see in table 3, original owners appear to have significantly larger house­holds than average (see above) and than inheritors; original owner extenders being particularly gregarious and fecund with means of 9.1 persons and 3.9 children in the household. All classes of owners tend to have larger nuclear families than renters. The main difference between owners here is that recent extenders have more abusua members (a mean of 0.6 or 0.7 more per household) to accommodate than non-recent extenders and recent builders.

It is interesting to note that a consequence of moving into a newly built house is that a builder at the mean has to accommodate an extra 0.6 persons (7% of the household) from his or her own or spouse's abusua. Very few residents in the sampled new-builder households are unrelated to the household head or his or her spouse. This supports Korboe's (1993) contention that few house builders have the renting of rooms as a priority when planning the size of their house.

Inheritors share their houses with more households and more people than original owners; recent extenders share with fewer than other owners and have lower house-occupancy rates (table 4, see over). This supports our earlier finding that extenders had improved their own household's accommodation, and tends not to support the hearsay that owners are keen to let out any rooms that they add, that is, again we find that their motive is largely nonpecuniary. However, it is evident that few owners in our

Table 3. Mean household size and mean population of houses for original owners, inheritors and renters in Kumasi.

Household size

Number of children

Percentage of household members not in nuclear family

Number of abusua b

members in household Number of households

in house Number of occupants

in house

Original owners

non-recent recent extenders extenders who who originally originally built built

8.1

3.5

24

2.2

5.1

23.6

9.1

3.9

28

2.8

4.9

21.8

Inheritors

recent builders a

new old

7.9 8.1 7.1

3.7 3.7 3.3

26 28 21

2.2 2.3 1.7

6.0 ni 6.0

24.7 ni 24.7

non-recent extenders who inherited

7.1

3.3

27

2.3

6.4

28.4

recent extenders who inherited

7.2

3.6

31

3.0

5.5

23.3

Renters

5.0

2.3

13

0.7

8.5

33.7

a Data are included for the majority who have moved into the new house and the minority who are still in the old house, ni means no information. b These are members of the extended family (abusua) of either partner in a marriage who are not part of the nuclear family of single or married adults and their children.

A G Tipple, D T Korboe, G D Garrod

Table 4. Measures of crowding (means) for original owners, inheritors and renters in Kumasi.

Original owners Inheritors Renters

non-recent recent recent non-recent recent extenders extenders buildersa extenders extenders who who who who originally originally n e w ° ^ inherited inherited built built

Household occupancy 2.7 2.7 2.6 3.6 3.8 4.2 rate 2.0 4.5

Numbers of rooms 3.6 3.9 4.2 2.3 2.2 1.4 occupied 4.8 2.3

Number of rooms 2.9 2.8 4.1 2.1 1.8 ni first occupied 4.8 2.1

House occupancy rate 2.8 2.5 2.7 3.2 2.9 2.9 ni 2.7

Number of rooms 8.3 8.9 6.3 8.9 8.5 11.7 in house 6.3 9.0

a Data are included for the majority who have moved into the new house and the minority who are still in the old house, ni means no information.

sample occupy single-household houses. Instead, at the means, they share with four or five other households. Perhaps surprisingly, recent extenders do not have more house­holds or people per house than non-recent extenders. This demonstrates that the extension activity is related more to incremental building than to adding to already 'complete' houses.

Recent builders taken together have household characteristics roughly midway between the original owners and inheritors. However, the few who do not live in the house which they are building have a mean household size similar to the inheritors (that is, smaller than the other original owners) and different from renters (see table 3). This suggests that their household conditions are already setting them apart from renters. Previous work (for example, Tipple and Willis, 1991) took the view that large households arose mainly from exogenous pressures after the ownership status has been achieved, but our current findings suggest that much of the household pressure exists before ownership is achieved.

Table 4 shows remarkable consistency of household occupancy rate amongst the original owners but basic differences from the inheritors who have a whole person per room more crowding at the mean. This is also reflected, but with even more emphasis, in the number of rooms occupied. It appears to show that inheritors tend to control less of the house which they own than owners who have built; in other words, the abusua panyin who is the head of the inheriting lineage and primus inter pares of the inheritors of a house (see Amole et al, 1993) has less ability to maintain the lion's share of the house than an outright owner.

It is interesting to note that the inheritors have extremely high occupancy rates, above 3.5 at the mean, almost as high as renters and above the mean for the city as a whole of 3.3 persons per room (see section 3). They are even higher than the rates found for occupants of rented rooms and family-owned rooms in compounds in 1986 (Tipple and Willis, 1991). This might be expected from other work on Kumasi and West

Comparison of owners and inheritors in housing in Kumasi 899

Africa(13) but is very marked given that our sample picked out the main household, probably that of the abusua panyin, not just a minor household with no power to bargain for a fair share of the rooms.

The highest occupancy rates are recorded for the recent builders who still live in their old house. Their mean occupancy of 4.5 persons per room (table 4) and house­hold size of 7.1 (table 3) support the cogency of the argument that existing housing conditions are influential in the decision to build. It can be seen that, at the mean, they at least halve their occupancy rate and double the rooms they occupy by the act of moving into the new house. At the same time, as shown in table 3, their household size only increases by one in seven. Recent extenders among the original owners have succeeded in keeping their mean occupancy rate the same as non-recent extenders— 2.7 persons per room (table 4).

The original owners have tended to improve their room occupation over time (from means of 2.8 and 2.9 originally to 3.6 and 3.9 currently, table 4). Inheritors have made fewer gains in this area rising from 1.8 and 2.1 up to 2.2 and 2.3. In general, however, houses are crowded. Mean persons per room for the whole house are a little lower than the 3.3 persons per room mean in Kumasi. Again (but to a lesser extent), original owners' houses are less crowded than those inherited.(14) However, as the houses in our sample are generally newer than in the city as a whole, it is, perhaps, surprising that they are so crowded. The households of new builders living in the new house only achieve mean occupancy rates of 2.0 persons per room which, although low for Kumasi, hardly represent the spacious living which might be expected of a household settling into a new six-roomed home, especially with only 1.5 rooms at the mean used by other households.

Our best estimate of construction costs at the time of our survey was about 0600 000 (£600) for an average room of about 10 m2, though the formal construction sector charged between 090000 and 0120000 m~2. In our data for recent builders in Kumasi (adjusted for inflation), we find that mean costs per room vary from 0700000 for compounds to 01720 000 for villas, with multistorey apartments in between at 0800 000.

The mean cost of each house type can be estimated, therefore, at 03.9 million (£3900) for compounds, 010.9 million (£10900) for villas, and 06.8 million (£6800) for multistorey apartments or about 3.5, 5.0, and 4.3 times annual household income, respectively. The sizes of houses are similar for all groups except recent builders and renters. The new houses occupied by recent builders tend to be smaller than others. Some of the renters occupy very large rooming houses which increase the mean rooms per house statistic for that group.

Table 5 (see over) shows that the original owners and inheritors are very different in household income; original owners have at least 50% greater household income at the mean. Renters are known to have higher per capita incomes than owners in Kumasi (Tipple and Willis, 1991); in our sample they have more than a third more at the mean. More interestingly, however, the recent builders appear to be little different from the rest of the original owners, counter to our hypothesis. If we take the recent builders who have not yet moved in, however, they are considerably better off (in per capita income terms) than any other group. The reasons for this probably include the following:

(13) Amole et al (1993) point out that the family house (which, in our sample, will be almost every house inherited from the first owner) is an important safety net for the poorer members of the family but constitutes some of the worst housing in West African cities. Furthermore, Tipple and Willis (1991) showed that family-house occupants in Kumasi had higher occupancy rates than others. (14) Perhaps this again reflects the greater power that an outright owner has than the abusua panyin over how many people live in the house altogether (Amole et al, 1993).

900 A G Tipple, D T Korboe, G D Garrod

(a) The better off builders are more choosy about the conditions in their new house than the others and so take longer to move in. (b) They are probably building more expensive types of housing; 66% are building noncompound houses but only 59% of those who have moved in built noncompound houses. (c) The 24% who own the house they currently occupy are less likely to live in the new one and so moving in is self-selecting towards the poorer recent builders. (d) Ghanaians tend to build while they have the opportunity as an insurance against whatever might arise in the future. In this case, moving in is not critical so the house may be let, completed over a prolonged period, or finished and underutilised for years against the time when it is needed.

Table 5. Mean incomes for original owners, inheritors, and renters in Kumasi.

Original owners Inheritors Renters

non-recent recent recent non-recent recent extenders extenders builders3 extenders extenders who who who who originally originally n e w ° ^ inherited inherited built built

Household income 1.7 1.7 1.8 1.2 0.9 1.2 (0 million per annum) 1.9 1.8

Per capita income 273 249 279 206 174 314 (0 thousand per annum) 261 337

a Data are included for the majority who have moved into the new house and the minority who are still in the old house, respectively.

6 Conclusions In Ghana the building of houses has to be funded from cash and savings as there is no readily available housing finance system. In addition, urban houses are relatively large (those in the sample have a mean of 9.25 rooms) and might be expected to constitute an insuperable challenge to all but the wealthiest Ghanaians. In this context, then, the incomes of owners are lower than might be expected and differences in income between owners and renters are not very marked. In addition, recent builders are not very different from other owners and the hypothesis of income differences between recent and long-standing owners cannot be supported on the evidence.

Recent extenders' households are a little larger than others but, when original owner recent extenders are examined separately, their households are seen to be the largest of any subset of the sample. Recent extenders do not have higher household or per capita incomes than other owners. In line with findings from studies in industrial­ised countries (Seek, 1983; Ziegert, 1988), therefore, household incomes do not seem to influence whether extensions are made. However, once the decision has been taken, the amount of money spent on extensions certainly does appear to be influenced positively by household income. The influential variable in this regard is the amount that a household's income exceeds that of others in the area.

Thus the idea that house construction (either as a new house or an extension) is more difficult and expensive now than earlier is not supported by the data. Rather, surprisingly, low-income people are becoming owners of quite large houses and doing so for much less money than we had expected.

Comparison of owners and inheritors in housing in Kumasi 901

The distribution of household characteristics changes when a division between original owners and inheritors is made. In that case, we see that the characteristics of original owners differ markedly from renters and those of inheritors more closely resemble renters. Inheritors have lower incomes and smaller households, and have more people per house and per room than original owners.

Recent builders have very similar incomes to long-standing owners, particularly when inheritors are excluded from the latter category. Furthermore, the relatively low income of original owners, including those recently active, suggests that there are many potential builders in Ghana just waiting for the opportunity. Currently, that opportunity must be grasped with cash-in-hand as potential builders launch into a long and arduous recurring cycle of active building, then a pause for saving, then active building again. A workable financing system directing loans of 03 million to 08 million (£3000-8000) towards households with (1993) incomes between 01 million and 02 million (£1000 - 2000) would tap this rich vein of potential housing supply.

The detailed examination of the similarities and differences between inheritors and renters available from our data suggests that considerable housing advantages are gained through inheritance. These are not reflected in income differences nor caused by household size advantages (as inheritors have larger households). The relative poverty of inheritors in Kumasi is contrary to the findings of Hamnett (1991) for the United Kingdom. Inheritance in Kumasi seems to pass ownership of property down to less well-off households who then enjoy more housing than renters. The inheritor owners are closer to renters in many characteristics than to original owners. Inheri­tance does appear to act, therefore, as a redistributive mechanism for housing goods and as an agency for upward filtering of households in the housing stock (Strassmann, 1977). Inheritance supplies more rooms in smaller houses(15) with lower occupancy rates than renters have. However, the inheritors do not consume as much housing as their original owner peers, perhaps indicating that the housing is filtering downwards (deteriorating in the quantity and quality of housing goods provided) at the same time as the households are filtering up (improving their tenure).

We have seen that inheritors are less well off than original owners but some have the ability to extend their inherited houses. Indeed, inheritor recent extenders are the least well off of all the subgroups. It is probable that financial assistance for extensions, in the form of market rate loans of 01 million to 02 million (£1000-£2000), would assist all owners wishing to extend. It would not be difficult to develop a means to make such loans available to inheritors (as a group of partners under abusua panyin).

Finance is the key to participation in housing supply by large numbers of potential owners and by the relatively low-income group represented by inheritor recent extenders. The provision of such finance would fulfil the requirements of the Global Shelter Strategy (UNCHS, 1990) to involve all actors in the housing process. In addition, loans given to groups of inheritors would tend to be self-targeting to the poor given the role of inherited houses (family houses) as an important social safety net for the old, the infirm, and the poor in a family (Amole et al, 1993).

Acknowledgement. This research has been carried out through the sponsorship of the Leverhulme Trust.

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