Rural-Urban Poverty Nexus: Impact of Housing Environment

Abstract

Poverty has several dimensions and multi formation. Usually it is defined by focusing narrowly on income poverty or broadly by including lack of access to opportunities for raising standards of living. Strategies aimed at poverty reduction need to identify factors that are strongly associated with poverty and agreeable to modification by policy. This study uses integrated Household Survey (2009-10) data collected by Federal Bureau of Statistics to examine possible determinants of poverty status, employing Bivariate models. In general, this study tries to seek in depth knowledge of the household environmental and public utilities for poverty status that account for poverty differentials in Pakistan specifically in urban and rural areas. The intensity of poverty is more in rural areas compared to urban for the same characteristics of variable viz-a-viz more poor are concentrated and residing in rural areas We find ownership of assets is a key determinant in defining poverty status in both areas but in rural region its impact more. Population occupying a house with more rooms, having better sewage system, Piped water and toilet type are mostly belonging to the class which is non-poor in both regions. Moreover, transitory poor class having defined variables have more probability to come out of poverty line defined. Policy makers might target transitory poor class first to break the vicious circle by providing them better household environments.

Keywords; Poverty Status, Transitory poor, Extreme poor, Public utilities, Housing Environment.