Educational Attainment of Household Head and Household Size Patterns in Mass-Housing Apartments in Lagos State, Nigeria

Demographic and crowding experiences in multifamily apartments built by the Lagos State Development and Property Corporation (LSDPC) in Lagos, Nigeria, are now seen as affecting households' well-being and quality of life.  One of the emerging criteria for general social class grouping is educational attainment of household head.  This study focused on investigating the impact of educational attainment of the head of household on household crowding experiences in the multifamily apartments belonging to LSDPC.  There was no evidence that this gap had been addressed by previous researchers.  The research adopted a purposive case study of four big housing estates that are dominated by multifamily apartments.  In all of these, a total of 7,764 multifamily apartments constituted the sampling frame from which a sample of 7.5% (582) was eventually used.  A pre-tested questionnaire was distributed using stratification and systematic random techniques.  Six variables were used to measure educational attainment:  below Primary School; Primary School; Secondary School; College of Education; Polytechnic; and University.  A major finding shows that when other socio-demographic indicators were isolated, the educational attainment of the head of household had a significant effect on crowding in two out of the six multifamily apartment types investigated, namely Type 3 (three-bedroom) at Abesan and Type 5 (three-bedroom) at Dolphin II. Possession of a university education is a strong indicator that the LSDPC’s multifamily apartment occupied will experience a lower occupancy rate or lower household size. Therefore, it is suggested that social policies in the domain of education should be incorporated into LSDPC’s housing development programmes in order to moderate crowding propensity in its mass-housing apartments of the future

Crowding Experiences in Gentrified Multifamily Apartments in Public Housing Estates in Lagos

In Lagos, Nigeria, the dynamics of noticeable experiences in public sector multifamily housing include situations where households of higher income and status migrate to apartments built for lower income, resulting in displacements. This situation triggers some social effects like crowding, the extent of which is not yet empirically investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which crowding occurs in gentrified multifamily apartments belonging to Lagos State Development and Property Corporation (LSDPC). Apartments that are no longer owned by original allottees either through purchase or re-purchase are classified as gentrified. A purposive case study of four LSDPC’s estates was adopted. The study population was 7,764 apartments comprising low income and medium income categories. A sample of 582 (7.5%) apartments was chosen. Stratification and systematic random sampling were utilized to select apartments, based on number of bedrooms and their matching proportion in each estate. A pre-tested questionnaire was used to elicit responses from household heads. Variables of interest were number of occupants, mode of ownership (tenure), ages, gender and marital arrangement of occupants. Levels of crowding for different apartment types were computed using the universally accepted Canadian National Occupancy Standard (CNOS) and the Equivalized Crowding Index (ECI). Generally, the results showed that the gentrified apartments investigated were under-occupied, similar to the non-gentrified apartments. This suggests that gentrification is not a threat factor for overcrowding or neighbourhood population bloating in LSDPC’s multifamily apartments. Therefore, social problem policies could be supported by evidence from the knowledge of crowding patterns in gentrifying households for different apartment type