Poverty and the Quality of the Housing: Construction of Index Using FFDP Approach

Abstract

Poverty is multidimensional and more complex concept. The researchers have sufficiently explored the causes of poverty, but still have to be explored in the context of effects of poverty. There is increasing consensus that the income and/or consumption measures do not fully capture the qualitative dimension of poverty such as the lack of comfort, education, health, housing, personal safety, and social inclusion etc. Usually the poor has inadequate health and education facilities, low housing facilities and the other similar ills. This paper explores the housing condition of the poor by constructing the quality of the housing index (QHI). This QHI is very detailed and comprehensive incorporating the various dimensions in depth including housing facilities, distance of the facilities available to the house, frequency of the use of these facilities and perception about the services available to the households. This paper will use the recently available country-wide micro-level data collected by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics under the title of Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey (PSLM): Round VI (2010-11). It is concluded that urban non-poor residents who live in ketcha houses have the highest quality of housing, on average. Second, the urban non-poor households come who have both the land line and mobile facilities. The third rank is observed in the rural non-poor households who use gas as a source of cooking food. The worst quality of housing is found in rural poor households who have almost no regular source of lighting in their houses.