Urbanization across the globe has increased at an unprecedented pace. It is expected that global rural population will become stagnant, while the urban population will continue to increase.
Urbanization in Bangladesh has sky-rocketed in the past few decades, with Dhaka predicted to become the most densely populated city in the world by 2030. The migration of people from rural areas have resulted in a population of 5.4 million in the urban slums of the six largest cities in the country in 2010.
Living conditions and opportunities in urban slums have been far worse than those in rural areas, yet migration still occurs due to agglomeration of economic activities in the urban area. This has resulted in inequality across a broad range of issues, for urban dwellers of different incomes, occupations, classes, and religions.
The following sections highlight some of the inequalities that exist between slum-dwellers and non-slum-dwellers, as well as those amongst slum-dwellers themselves.
Healthcare disparity in urban Bangladesh
A study on the health care sector across five urban cities in Bangladesh showed that women in slums were getting married earlier, receiving less education, and bearing more children compared to their non-slum counterparts. In terms of healthcare during childbirth, women in slum were almost three times less likely than the women in non-slum areas to have a skilled birth attendant during delivery in 2006, but that difference dropped to 1.8 times, showing improvement in the sector by the urban slums, and the appointment of community health workers playing a major role in closing the gap.
However, the study found that the intra-urban difference in the nutritional status of children did not significantly improve. Even though both slums and non-slums saw a decrease in stunting of children, which is indicative of bad nutritional status, the difference in the status between the two areas remained unchanged from 2006 to 2013.
Another study showed that while non-slum areas had the advantage of accessibility to formal health care sectors, slum areas relied on the informal sector, NGOs, and government service providers. Moreover, private providers can exploit the lack of knowledge, awareness and choice of slum-dwellers to maximize profit.
Therefore, slum-dwellers seem to compromise quality for accessibility when using informal healthcare providers, and affordability for quality when using private healthcare sector.
Education disparity in urban Bangladesh
An extensive study undertaken found that one of the biggest issues with schooling in the urban area is that primary schools are free but secondary schools require money, even government-run ones. Therefore, it becomes a problem for slum children to afford education.
Slum children often have to financially support their families, and girls often have to help in domestic chores so they often drop out of school. Moreover, due to social and political influence of the upper-class people, government schools are constructed in areas where children from the upper, wealthy societies can have easy access.
This deprives slum children of accessing government education, and as a result, they end up attending schools run by NGOs or unregistered schools. A major issue with attending unregistered school is that students are not able to register officially for board exams.
This increases educational disparity between slum-dwellers and non-slum dwellers. Moreover, schools that have existed for a long time can provide better service and these long-established schools are usually not found near slums.
Children from wealthy families who can afford private tutoring tend to do better in board exams than children from slums who are unable to afford tutoring, which ultimately affects career opportunities.
Housing disparity in urban Bangladesh
One study looked at housing disparity among house-owners, renters, and squatter communities. Using average monthly consumption expenditures (AVMCE) as a proxy for income, the author found that owner and rental households had almost the same AVMCE (Tk12,045 for owners and Tk11,526 for renters).
In contrast, the AVMCE for squatter household was almost half at Tk6,825. The difference in education level was also quite vast between the squatter community and the owner/rental community. The percentage of household heads without any formal education was 39% for owners, 32% for renters, and 65% for squatter communities.
Public, cooperative, private, and individual housing comprised the formal housing sectors, whereas slums and squatter housings made up the informal housing sector. The average size of owners’ dwellings was 44.4sq-m whereas that of the squatters was 21.5sq-m.
However, a similarity among all the housing communities was that improving the infrastructure of the dwelling, such as adding a roof to a squatter house, increased its housing value, as well as increasing the dwelling space, by adding an extra room. Better sanitation also increased the value of dwelling.
For squatter dwelling, access to water increased housing value by a huge 127%. Location of the dwellings across all groups also played an important role in dwelling value. Both formal and informal sector dwelling had the highest value in the three largest cities of the country.
Microfinance disparity in urban Bangladesh
In urban slums, microfinance institutes provide training and skill development, health care, maternity care, water and sanitation programs, with the aim of improving the quality of life for slum dwellers. Another study looked at the effect of microfinance institutions (MFI) on inequality among slum-dwellers in Dhaka.
Data collected through interviews revealed that a large portion of the microcredit borrowers were able to change their careers after getting microloans from MFIs. For both borrowers and non-borrowers, very few slum dwellers got government support or charity. On average, the borrowers saw an increase of around Tk8,000 compared to Tk7,458 for non-borrowers over a five-year period.
A majority of the borrowers had loans from more than one MFI since they could not get the desired amount of money from one MFI, and many mentioned that they took up second loans to pay off first loans. The non-borrowers mentioned that high interest rate, being denied loans from MFIs, and not knowing about microcredit loans were reasons for not taking out loans.
Between 2010 and 2015, extremely poor and moderately poor borrowers were able to overcome poverty by 2015. However, their earnings still remained quite low because of their low-paying jobs, or they did not have enough education to change professions. The borrowers were also able to afford better amenities such as water and electricity. Thus, slum-dwellers who used MFIs for loans were able to improve their quality of life, increasing inequality within the urban slum areas.
A lot of the research on urban inequality in Bangladesh has focused on the health care inequality between slums and non-slum areas. The inequality seems to have decreased with time, with many NGOs taking initiatives in closing the gap, especially for women, expecting mothers, and children.
By recognizing slums as legal residences and avoiding demolitions, slum residents can benefit from better quality of education and healthcare. Major government initiatives need to be taken to overcome inequality. Conventional wisdom dictates that, with increasing urbanization, inequality will also increase. Therefore, it is important that these issues are addressed immediately to keep urban inequality under control.
Ridwan Mosharraf Hossain is a graduate of Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
