Living Standards Measurements Study - Serbia 2002 - 2007

5. HOUSING CONDITIONS AND
POSSESION OF DURABLE GOODS 1
The questions within the “Housing and durable
goods” module in LSMS 2007 collected basic
information on different housing aspects such as:
type of dwelling, basic characteristics of the building
(the year it was built, surface area, facilities in the
apartment/house etc.), ownership of the dwelling, as
well as the possession of durable goods.
Furthermore, information on the costs necessary to
maintain the dwelling was collected as part of
household expenditure.
5.1. Basic housing conditions
The highest percentage of households in Serbia
live in a house (59 percent), then in a residential
building apartment (around 30 percent) while the
share of the households living in a house consisting
of several apartments is around 11 percent. A small
number of households occupy premises not
intended for living (0.5 percent).
A high percentage of households living below
the poverty line live in a house (almost 85 percent).
The number of households living in extremely bad
housing conditions is relatively small, although
there are a much higher number of households
living below the poverty line that live in such
dwellings (1.8 percent).
There is a high percentage of ownership of
residential dwellings in Serbia since 90.4 percent of
the households declared that they own a house or an
apartment (Table 1) 2 . According to the type of
settlement, there is a difference reflected in a higher
share of ownership of residential dwellings in non
urban than urban settlements by slightly over 5
percentage points. Also, the ownership of residential
dwellings is more frequent in households living
below the poverty line.
Households rent a whole apartment belong
exclusively to the group of households above the
poverty line 3 . Subtenant households are also more
frequent among the households above the poverty
line 4 . The fact that the households above the
poverty line are renting an apartment or living as
subtenants while the poor households, as opposed to
that, are mainly the owners of the residential
dwellings may, at first, appear as a paradox.
However, this may be explained by the fact that in
the group of poor households there is a big share of
elderly households that solved their housing
problem a long time ago, plus households from rural
areas, as well as extremely poor households in
urban areas, that may own a residential dwelling
(most often uninhabitable), but do not have the
money necessary for renting any kind of residential
unit.
The best portrayal of the differences in housing
conditions among poor and non poor households is
illustrated by data on the availability of a bathroom
and a toilet within the apartment. In non-poor
households 92.8 percent of the cases have a
bathroom within the apartment, and 90.3 percent
have a toilet within the apartment. In poor
households slightly over half the apartments include
a bathroom (54.3 percent) and a similar percentage
(51.1 percent) a toilet.
The average surface area of a residential
dwelling and the average surface per household
member are the important indicators of the housing
conditions quality. The average surface of the
residential dwelling of the persons living above the
poverty line is 75.5m 2 while the average surface of
the apartment per household member is 30.9 percent
m 2 . On the other hand, households below the
poverty line live in a house or an apartment of
around 52.7m 2 on average i.e. the average
residential area per household member is 22.4 m 2 .
In relation to when homes were built, it can be
seen that the households above the poverty line
(47.4 percent) mostly live in residential dwellings
built in the 1970s and 1980s while most of the
households living below the poverty line live in
older residential dwellings built after World War
Two and until the beginning of 1970s (46.4
percent). Apart from some specific vulnerable
groups (e.g. Roma) it is the older population (60+)
and rural population that are most affected by
poverty and these groups are mainly located in older
residential dwellings.
There is a large regional discrepancy in
relation to the year of construction of residential
dwellings. The highest share of households in older
residential dwellings (built before 1944) was
58 Living Standards Measurements Study - Serbia 2002 - 2007