The determinants of multidimensional poverty in the urban slums of Dhaka city

S.M. Asif Ehsan, Mazharul Hoque Bhuiyan, Mashnur Rahman, Md Saifur Rahman Sayeef, Marufa Ferdausi, Md Sajadul Alam, Abdul Hannan Chowdhury and Md. Jakariya

World Development Perspectives, 2025, vol. 39, issue C

Abstract: Communities in urban slums that are in dire need of uplifting from poverty are often overlooked in favor of countrywide macroeconomic initiatives to alleviate poverty. The poverty metrics utilized are generally based on income and expenditure. Nevertheless, poverty has a multifaceted nature with absolute and relative components. This paper examines the determinants of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in the urban slum areas, utilizing a household questionnaire survey conducted in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh. We use the ordered probit regression method, a binary response model, to identify socio-economic, environmental, and climate-change-induced factors affecting different categories of poverty. Our estimation results show that child school attendance, structural vulnerability, use of shared toilets, and the household head’s education level have the most statistically significant impact on the MPI. While the findings from this paper can induce policymakers to take a community-specific approach in the urban slums of Dhaka city, the MPI’s shortcomings in capturing environmental factors increasing the vulnerability of communities to external shocks should not be overlooked.

Keywords: Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI); Ordered Probit; Dhaka Slum; Urban Poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292925000700
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wodepe:v:39:y:2025:i:c:s2452292925000700

DOI: 10.1016/j.wdp.2025.100725

Access Statistics for this article

World Development Perspectives is currently edited by Ashwini Chhatre

More articles in World Development Perspectives from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().