Socio-Economic Status of the Street Children in Bangladesh

Abstract

Basically, the children who are in situations of poverty, illiteracy, disease and social injustice have been focused on this study and have been prioritized those children who sleep on streets, railway terminals and platforms, bus stations, parks and open spaces, religious centers, construction sites and around graveyard and in other public places with no roof in scale. A survey has been conducted on a sample of 101 children from two purposively selected areas of Dhaka city to gather information on their Socio-economic status by using quantitative method. Findings reveal that the street dwellers had to adopt a very precarious and humiliating life on the streets devoid of all basic amenities of life, under constant threat of eviction and harassment by the bad people and hoodlums. They work hard to meet their demands but due to their involvement in low paying informal sector, their demands are hardly filled out. They cannot improve their conditions at all even after five or more years of street-living. According to them, housing, food, and lack of jobs are the three most common problems for which they are to seek assistance and to live in the street for unknown period.