The Determinants of Poverty in Informal Settlement Areas of Mashhad (Case Study: Shahid Ghorbani Quarter)

Urban poverty has long been a concern of urban and development debates, and has been an important focus in social science research. Informal settlement in Mashhad city is highlighted because of its wide spreading and severity. This study aimed to determine the causes of urban poverty in informal settlement regions. The data were collected from household level questionnaire in 2016 and the Logistic Regression Model was performed to identify the determinants of urban poverty. The data were obtained from 220 households who settled in Shahid Ghorbani quarter using the questionnaire through the Systematic Random technique. Nearly 87 of households of the studied area were below absolute poverty line and 20 of them were below extreme poverty line. Given that all household heads in the sample were married men, significant relationships were observed between poverty and characteristics like “age of household head”, “being self-employed”, “household size”, “the ratio of worker in household”, “ownership of house” and “having social security”, while factors like “Access to services and infrastructures” and “education” had no significant impact on the likelihood of moving out of poverty. The results also revealed that if the household head is older and self–employed, the likelihood of being poor is gradually diminished. Also if the family members had some kind of social security or owned their houses, household welfare would improve; however, increasing in household size and ratio of worker in household would decrease household welfare. Eventually, the marginal effects of variables were interpreted.