Abstract:

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Slums are an integral part of urban spaces in India. Using state level nighttime light intensity as a measure of urbanization I empirically evaluate the impact of urbanization on slum growth from 1993 to 2012. In the process, I also exploit a large scale ’big-push’ national policy reform in India between 2005 and 2012 to further examine if such a policy was efficient in curbing the slum growth.

 

Combining a novel pooled cross-sectional household survey data and nighttime lights activity at state level, I find the likelihood of being a slum household is 14.2 percentage points more in states lying within the third quartile of nighttime light intensity. After the introduction of the policy the likelihood decreases for all quartiles, where the effect for the 3rd quartile is reduced by 3.9 percentage points.

 

The results are preliminary and highlights the role of underlying social phenomenon linked to migration and middle tier urbanized spaces.