Unraveling the effects of a rehabilitation program on the socioeconomic wellbeing of beggars and begging motivation: evidence from an urban area of Bangladesh

Beggars have largely been leading miserable lives in the lower stratum of society since time immemorial. Government or private-led policies are rarely undertaken to improve the lives of this unfortunate societal segment. The local governments in divisional cities of Bangladesh have adopted a series of interventions aimed at improving the socioeconomic wellbeing of beggars and equipping them with alternative livelihood management options. We evaluated the effectiveness of this intervention (the rehabilitation of beggars) in the Khulna City Corporation (KCC) area, Bangladesh; we gathered a sample of 385 beggars by employing the non-equivalent group design and instrumental variable regression method. The results provide an interesting inference, showing that the rehabilitation program seemingly has no far-reaching significant impact on the socioeconomic wellbeing of the beggars. To be precise, the program provides evidence of no significant differences in earnings, expenditure, food security, or personal wellbeing between the beneficiary and the non-beneficiary group of beggars. In addition, the program fails to deter beggars from continuing to beg, as the result shows no significant association between taking part in the program and begging demotivation. Consequently, the beggars are continuing begging, which indicates a critical policy failure on the part of both government and implementation bodies. Therefore, the study implicitly recommends on-track monitoring and timely evaluation of such interventions so that immediate action can be taken beforehand to empower beggars and move them up the social ladder both socially and economically.