Publication: Measuring the Welfare Effects of Slum Improvement Programs: The Case of Mumbai
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Published
2008
ISSN
00941190
Date
2012-03-30
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This paper evaluates the welfare effects of in situ slum upgrading and relocation programs using data for 5000 households in Mumbai, India. We estimate a model of residential location choice in which households value the ethnic composition of neighborhoods and employment accessibility in addition to housing characteristics. The importance of neighborhood composition and employment access implies that relocation programs must be designed carefully if they are to be welfare-enhancing. The value of our model is that it allows us to determine the magnitude of these effects. It also allows us to determine the value households place on in situ improvements, which policymakers need to know if they are to design housing programs that permit cost recovery.
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Publication The Welfare Effects of Slum Improvement Programs : The Case of Mumbai(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-02)The authors compare the welfare effects of in situ slum upgrading programs with programs that provide slum dwellers with better housing in a new location. Evaluating the welfare effects of slum upgrading and resettlement programs requires estimating models of residential location choice, in which households trade off commuting costs against the cost and attributes of the housing they consume, including neighborhood attributes. The authors accomplish this using data for 5,000 households in Mumbai, a city in which 40 percent of the population live in slums. The precise welfare effects of resettlement programs depend on assumptions made about the ease with which workers can change jobs and also on the ethnic characteristics of neighborhoods in which new housing is located. To illustrate this point the authors consider a realistic slum upgrading program that could be offered to residents in their sample living in east Mumbai. They summarize the effects of job opportunities and neighborhood composition on welfare by mapping how compensating variation for the program changes depending on where in Mumbai improved housing is located. If program beneficiaries continue working in their original job, the set of welfare-enhancing locations for the upgrading program is small. The set increases greatly if it is assumed that workers can change jobs. The benefits of this program are contrasted with the benefits of in situ housing improvements.Publication The Impact of Policies to Control Motor Vehicle Emissions in Mumbai, India(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-11)This paper examines the impact of measures to reduce emissions from passenger transport, specifically buses, cars, and two-wheelers in Mumbai. These include converting diesel buses to compressed natural gas (CNG), as the Indian Supreme Court required in Delhi, which would necessitate an increase in bus fares to cover the cost of pollution controls. The authors model an increase in the price of gasoline, which should affect the ownership and use of cars and two-wheelers, as well as imposing a license fee on cars to retard growth in car ownership. The impact of each policy on emissions depends not only on how the policy affects the mode that is regulated, but on shifts to other modes. The results suggest that the most effective policy to reduce emissions from passenger vehicles-in terms of the total number of tons of PM10 (particulate matter that measure less than or equal to 10 micrometers in aerodynamic diameter) reduced-is to convert diesel buses to CNG. The conversion of 3,391 diesel buses to CNG would result in an emissions reduction of 663 tons of PM10 a year, 14 percent of total emissions from transport. The bus conversion program passes the cost-benefit test. In contrast, the results suggest the elasticities of emissions from transport with respect to a gasoline tax and a tax on vehicle ownership are -0.04 and -0.10 respectively. As a consequence, it would take substantial increases in the gasoline tax or vehicle ownership tax to produce reductions in emissions similar to the bus conversion program. These results, however, reflect the low shares of cars and two-wheelers in the Mumbai emissions inventory and need not apply to cities, such as Delhi, where these shares are higher.Publication Urban Poverty and Transport : The Case of Mumbai(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-09)This paper reports the results of a survey of 5,000 households in the Greater Mumbai Region conducted in the winter of 2004. The goal of the survey was to better understand the demand for transport services by the poor, the factors affecting this demand, and the inter-linkages between transport decisions and other vital decisions such as where to live and work. This paper, the first of several research outputs, describes the salient facts about travel patterns in Mumbai for both poor and non-poor households. A striking finding of the survey is the extent to which all households-especially poor households-rely on walking. Overall, 44 percent of commuters in Mumbai walk to work. The proportion of the poor who walk to work is even higher-63 percent. Walking is an even higher modal share for nonwork than for work trips. A second finding is that public transit remains an important factor in the mobility of the poor, and especially in the mobility of the middle class. Overall, rail remains the main mode to work for 23 percent of commuters, while bus remains the main mode for 16 percent of commuters. The modal shares for bus are highest for the poor in zones 1-3 (21 percent of the poor in zone 2 take the bus to work), while rail shares are highest for the poor in the suburbs (25 percent of the poor in zone 6 take rail to work). Is the cost and lack of accessibility to transit a barrier to the mobility of the poor? Does it keep them from obtaining better housing and better jobs? This is a difficult question to answer without further analysis of the survey data. But it appears that transport is less of a barrier to the poor who live in central Mumbai (zones 1-3) than it is to the poor who live in the suburbs (zones 4-6). The poor who live in zones 1-3 (central Mumbai) live closer to the non-poor than do poor households in the suburbs. They also live closer to higher-paying jobs for unskilled workers. Workers in these households, on average, commute short distances (less than 3 kilometers), although a non-negligible fraction of them (one-third in zone 2) take public transit to work. It is true that the cost of housing for the poor is higher in central Mumbai than in the suburbs, but the quality of slum housing is at least as good in central Mumbai as in the suburbs. The poor who live in the suburbs of Mumbai, especially in zones 5 and 6, are more isolated from the rich than the poor in central Mumbai: 37 percent of the poor live in zones 5 and 6, whereas only one-fifth of higher income groups do. Wages for skilled and unskilled labor are generally lower in zones 5 and 6 than in the central city, and it appears that unemployment rates for poor males are also higher in these zones. The lower cost of slum and chawl housing in zones 5 and 6 may partly compensate for lower wages. However, a larger proportion of workers in poor households leave zones 5 and 6 to work than is true for poor workers in other zones. Commuting distances are much higher for poor workers in the suburbs than for poor workers in zones 1-3.Publication Implications of Alternate Policies on Welfare of Slum Dwellers : Evidence from Pune, India(2008)In this paper we examine how slum dwellers value location-based amenities. In most developing country cities, residents living in slums have poor-quality dwellings and limited access to basic public services and amenities. Using data from Pune, India, we estimate the residential location choices of slum dwellers, which are conditional on housing quality, neighborhood amenities, and community structure. We use these estimates to simulate the impact of alternate interventions on household welfare. We find that households derive benefits from housing quality and neighborhood amenities. While relocating households to the periphery has adverse consequences for household welfare, we show that households could be adequately compensated out of the increased tax revenue accruing from alternative uses of the vacated central land.Publication The Impact of Urban Spatial Structure on Travel Demand in the United States(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-03)The authors combine measures of urban form and public transit supply for 114 urbanized areas with the 1990 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey to address two questions: (1) How do measures of urban form, including city shape, road density, the spatial distribution of population, and jobs-housing balance affect the annual miles driven and commute mode choices of U.S. households? (2) How does the supply of public transportation (annual route miles supplied and availability of transit stops) affect miles driven and commute mode choice? The authors find that jobs-housing balance, population centrality, and rail miles supplied significantly reduce the probability of driving to work in cities with some rail transit. Population centrality and jobs-housing balance have a significant impact on annual household vehicle miles traveled (VMT), as do city shape, road density, and (in rail cities) annual rail route miles supplied. The elasticity of VMT with respect to each variable is small, on the order of 0.10-0.20 in absolute value. However, changing several measures of form simultaneously can reduce annual VMT significantly. Moving the sample households from a city with the characteristics of Atlanta to a city with the characteristics of Boston reduces annual VMT by 25 percent.
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