DOI: 10.5176/2425-0112_UPPD18.128
Authors: Paul-Emile Brice
Abstract:the objective of this paper is to examine the effect of precarious economic conditions on the development of slums in developing countries. We use unemployment rate and income as the primary variables to understand slum prevalence in a sample of developing countries during two different periods, 1995 to 2005 and 2006 to 2016. For the first period, previous studies found a significant relationship between GDP per capita and the proportion of people living in slums (Fox, 2014). Our study compares these findings to the next period (2006 to 2016). We use Ordinary Least Squares analysis (OLS) to estimate the impact of unemployment and income on slum population percentage for each of these periods. OLS results suggest that income— independently from formal or informal economic activity—can significantly contribute to decrease slum populations across all regions where developing countries are located. The findings also suggest that countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, compared to the others, face more obstacles toward decreasing their slum populations despite an increase in income. The paper explores this topic through five sections. First, a brief description of the background of the topic and the previous findings, followed by a presentation of the variables and sample data. Then, the observations are described and predictions are made regarding the relationship between the variables. The fourth section presents the OLS results, followed by a brief discussion of the results and conclusion.
Keywords: component: slum population, income, unemployment, informal urbanization, informal economy, developing countries
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