What Happens with Household Assets during Economic Collapse? The Case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1975–2010)

Abstract

Many Congolese seem to have withstood their country’s protracted economic crisis relatively well, despite its length and severity. This study analyses whether and to what extent this livelihood paradox can be explained by a strategy of asset depletion. In general, this strategy seems not to have played an important role. Marked reductions in household asset stock were limited to some secondary urban centres. Explanations for this strategy’s limited reach point to a much richer set of asset coping mechanisms which households may have developed regarding assets in times of hardship, and to a concomitant shortage of research strategies to take due account of these.