Pulling rickshaws in the city of Dhaka: a way out of poverty?

Abstract

This paper is based on a study drawing on information from current and former rickshaw pullers in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Most of these rickshaw pullers are very poor, and have little education and few skills. Rickshaw pulling provides them with relatively easy access to the urban labour market, and an escape from extreme rural poverty. But the initial trend of modest upward mobility from rickshaw pulling is not sustained in the long run. For the sample in this study, almost all economic and social indicators - including income poverty - deteriorated with the length of involvement in rickshaw pulling. The unsustainability of the livelihood is related to the extreme physical demands of the activity, which are unrealistic in the context of poverty and malnutrition, and which result in high vulnerability to health shocks. The paper concludes that rickshaw pulling provides no permanent route to escaping poverty.