In Burkina Faso, the analysis of the consequences of the urbanization in terms of poverty, based on a spatio-time-series approach, organized in function, on the one hand, information of the household surveys – 1994-95 and 1998 –, and the demographic and health surveys – 1992-93 and 1998-99 – and, on the other hand, the administrative division according to 30 provinces, allows to formulate three conclusions. Firstly, the study shows that the growth rate of the incidence of relative regional urban poverty is higher 14 percent than that of the rate of urbanization. Although the values of elasticities decrease with the rise in the coefficient of aversion for poverty, they remain higher than the unit. In this respect, the increasing difficulty of the labour market access, the increased precariousness of urban employment and the progressive weakening of the mobilization of the social capital, could explain the absolute and relative increase of monetary deprivations in the cities. Secondly, by using the child mortality as example of households capabilities indicator, research highlights, correlatively with the urbanization, at the same time a progression of the level of the child survival, and a rise in the inequality of the infant and child mortality. This evolution, coherent with the increase in the inegality of the monetary expenditure in urban environment, illustrates, indirectly, the incapacity of the authorities to counterbalance the insufficient mobilization of the assets by the market or the social institutions, by the development of the access to the social infrastructures and the introduction of safety social nets. Thirdly, although Burkina Faso remains a largely rural country – in 2030, a third of the population is likely to be urbanized –, the preceding tendencies, if they were confirmed –. including in other developing countries –, could mean that, in the long run, sectoral reallocation of poverty, inherent in the structural changes and with the shifts in population which accompany it, constitutes new challenges of the strategies of development.(Full text in French)
