What Will Make Beggars Quit Begging in Chattogram, Bangladesh?

Abstract

This research is an effort to help policymakers in alleviating poverty from Bangladesh. It mainly looks into if offering job or granting allowance can be effective tools for inducing beggars to quit this practice. It also sheds some light on the possible determinants of reservation allowance and reservation wage. Statistical tools and OLS regressions are used to analyze the data collected from a sample of 300 beggars. Findings suggest that both of offering job and granting allowance can be effectively used to reduce the incidence of begging. However, policy of granting allowance is found to be more powerful than offering job. As far as the determinants of reservation allowance and reservation wage are concerned, while a beggar’s reservation allowance is significantly determined by whether the beggar is disabled and whether the beggar has willingness to do work instead of begging, a beggar’s reservation wage is mainly determined by monthly income and the beggar’s gender.