Inégalités des ménages face à la réception de transferts informels. Quelques leçons issues de Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso)

The persistent macro-economic crisis in West Africa is an obstacle to development of a system of voluntary institutional social protection. The most vulnerable rely for support solely on the transfers they receive from their family circle. In this context we present an analysis of the architecture of the assistance received by households in five neighbourhoods of Ouagadougou monitored by the Observatoire de la Population de Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). We examine firstly the differences in profiles between those households receiving and those not receiving aid ; and secondly the characteristics of the support received in terms of the degree of urbanisation of the neighbourhood, using multiple component analysis. Our results show that while a minority of households receive informal assistance, those in official neighbourhoods are the most dependent on it. The sex of the household head has more effect than his or her age on whether the household receives informal assistance ; and households headed by women are the most assisted, despite their great social diversity. Other factors such as the marital status of the household head are also important. On the other hand, the poorest households are not the most assisted ; and we find that the standard of living of the family of origin of the household head has little influence on the probability of the household receiving assistance, which suggests that the structure of informal transfers is based more on geographical than on familial proximity. Finally we note that in general, informal assistance is more random in the more urbanised neighbourhoods, while in unofficial settlements cash-based i dis considered the least useful form of assistance.