Multi-dimensional Poverty in Urban Zones

In addition to poverty-gauging measures using incomes and expenditures, poor people in urban zones are vulnerable to shortage and expense burden of education, healthcare, employment, housing and security. ‘Multidimensional’ poverty is becoming an alarming problem in large cities, particularly Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

 

According to an urban poverty survey conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Hanoi and HCM City, the poverty rate in terms of income is very low in both cities and HCM City always has a lower poverty rate than Hanoi in terms of poverty criteria in use. Homeless migrants are poorer than those with homes, using lower poverty lines. But, there is not much difference when higher lines are in use. People poor in income in Hanoi flock into rural areas, with over 10 %, while the rate is nearly 1 % in urban zones.

 

Ms Le Thi Thanh Loan, Acting Director of HCM City Statistics Office, said, although the poverty rate is lower, HCM City is poorer in all social aspects. Absolute income is not an important factor to reflect multi-dimensional poverty in HCM City because this factor gives rise to a low poverty rate and contributes humbly to multi-dimensional poverty indicators and does not change much when the indicator of deficiencies increases.

 

The two cities have the largest shortages in four aspects: Social welfare system, access to appropriate housing services (including electricity, water and waste services), access to quality housing (quality and acreage), and education. In HCM City, people without health insurance policies account for 42.8 %.

The report also shows that rural people and migrants are deficient in more dimensions than urban dwellers and people with registered permanent addresses. Notably, the deficiency of participation in social activities of people without registered permanent addresses is very high and widely distant from people with registered permanent addresses. Currently, migrants without registered permanent addresses in Hanoi account for 11.4 % and the rate in HCM City is 20.6 %.

 

Notably, three most weighted dimensions to the poverty index in the two cities are the shortage of access to social welfare system, access to appropriate housing services (including electricity, water and waste services), and housing quality and acreage. In HCM City, the deficiency of education also contributes significantly to multi-dimensional poverty. Currently, Hanoi has a better education outcome than HCM City, proven by indicators of literacy rate, educational background, professional qualification, and %age of right-age schooling.

 

To address these shortcomings, according to the report, authorities of Hanoi and HCM City should adopt comprehensive poverty reduction plans with effective urban poverty monitoring and evaluating systems and with multi-dimensional approaches. They need to focus on some critical services like strengthening social welfare system, housing services (including electricity, water and waste services), housing quality and acreage, universalising secondary education, mobilising children to go to school, creating equal access to public education, health care and health insurance, and promoting the public participation, particularly migrants, in social activities and social organisations. By doing so, the urban poverty rate in the two cities will be improved significantly.