Poverty and Access: Differences and Commonalties across Slum Communities in Bangkok

Adequate access to basic services,particularly services such as water and sanitation, is vital to the health, economic productivity and general quality of life experienced by urban residents. While basic environmental amenities are available at a reasonable cost to city dwellers in industrialized countries, a majority of developing country citizens remain completely without access to basic services. This paper relies on a comprehensive series of access measures to capture the standard of living of households located within greater Bangkok (as of early 1994). The focus is on measures of access to infrastructure with the goal of improving access as a means toward increasing the benefits reaped by community residents. In so doing, the paper has two objectives: first, to work toward a clarification of the notion of access, particularly as it relates to basic services among the urban poor; and second, to illustrate how this framework can be used to assess access in large cities in developing countries, such as Bangkok. We find that some of the differences in access across geographic zones and income groupings can be explained by the relative age and construction differences among slums in the inner, middle and outer rings of Bangkok. The residents of older settlements (i.e., the inner ring), for example, tend to be amongst the wealthiest suggesting that as a community establishes itself, access to both services and resources is enhanced, irrespective of government policy. In addition, many of the important points regarding access can be understood as a reflection of the resource endowments of low-income urban households residing in primarily informal housing settlements. There are, however, a number of differences that do not appear to be necessarily related or explained by either location or income. As an example, while it is normally the instinct of planners and engineers to influence the supply of services, such as increasing the availability of piped water connections, it is not clear from our analysis that this is the best use of resources. While a minority of households in most communities lack piped water connections (40% or so), consumption of water does not appear to differ with access to connections. Rather, the most required or helpful role that planning could play, to improve access to water, is through reducing its cost (for the poorest households) and, probably, through encouraging its treatment prior to use as drinking water.