The focus of this chapter is to describe the environment in which women, children and men live. This description shows housing facilities (dwelling characteristics, types of technology and fuel used for cooking, space heating, and lighting, and household possessions), household arrangements (headship, size), and general characteristics of the population such as age-sex structure, literacy, and education. A distinction is made between urban and rural settings where many of these indicators usually differ.
Besides providing the background for better understanding of many social and demographic phenomena discussed in the following chapters, this general description is useful for assessing the level of economic and social development of the population.