Inequitable distribution of resources, including physical capital such as housing, poses a threat to sustainable development. Employing a case of housing in urban India, focusing on renter and slum dwellers, this study documents housing inequality and poverty, examines whether and why there is a gap in living standards (measured by dwelling size), and estimates the demand for housing. The study uses decomposition analysis to identify causes of inequality and estimates demand for housing among owner, renter and slum dwellers, employing a national representative microdata over a survey of 50,000 households. The results revealed that the average floor area consumption in renter/slum households is about twothird of the owner households, ceteris paribus. The reason for poor quality of renter/slum dwellings is not limited to differences in endowment levels, but also includes different 'rates of return' to these endowments. In order to enhance housing consumption in renter/slum dwellers, in addition to income improvement strategies, there needs to be a focus on skills upgradation and provision of a stable employment base. Moreover, renters/slums dwellers are concentrated in million plus cities and in the western and eastern regions of the country. Therefore, specific housing programs should be designed to target these regions.Keywords Living standard · Housing · Poverty · Inequality · Renter · Slum · India S. Ahmad Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), Uitned Nations University, Tokyo, Japan S. Ahmad Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan S. Ahmad (*) Laboratory for Integrated Research and Action for Human Settlements (LabSet), D92, Second Floor, Shaheen Bagh, Jamia Nagar, 110025 New Delhi, India e-mail: architectsohail@gmail.com 108 S. Ahmad
IntroductionIndia has the second largest urban population in the world (after the PRC) with 377 million people (Census of India 2011b). Urban India is characterized by severe housing poverty as well as inequality, with about 24 million housing shortages in 2007 (NBO 2007) and about 93 million slum dwellers spread unevenly in 49,000 slums across the country (NBO 2010). 1 Moreover, one-third of urban dwellers live in rental accommodations, which are poorly equipped. For instance, renter households have lower living standards than the owner households and are almost comparable to slums on certain indicators. Therefore, slums as well as rental dwellings can be perceived to be representative of housing poverty and inequality. Slums have been widely discussed among researchers and policy-makers (Angeles et al. 2009;Dupont 2008; Habitat 2003a, b;Mathur 2009). Recently, a serious attempt has been made through the ambitious program Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) to make India slumfree within five years (MHUPA 2011). In contrast, there are few studies dealing with issues of rental dwellings, despite their significance for the urban poor in developing economies (Habitat 2003a, b). The few studies that have dealt with rental dwellings have focused on the low-in...