| Sumario: | The objective of this article is to analyse the evolving living conditions across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between 1970 and 2010. In the mid-1970s, the DRC (Zaire) entered a long downward spiral, which can be read as a textbook example of state failure and economic regress: the 1973 nationalization policy of Mobutu formed the starting point; the first African world war (1998-2003) was a brutal low. Over this period, the average Congolese saw his income decrease to only one fifth of the level he attained in the 1970s. Surprisingly enough, this economic decay of the country did not seem to have much affected the survival chances of its population: both life expectancy and mortality rates even improved a bit. In short, viewed through a macro-economic telescope everybody must have been moribund, but through a microscope many seemed to be alive and kicking. To solve this “Congo puzzle”, five hypotheses will be put forward. Whereas the first focuses on the validity of this livelihood paradox itself, all other hypotheses are formulated as genuine coping strategies. In order to address each of them, the present paper will rely on various (national) survey data, coming in total from about fifty thousand different households.
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