Almost all the difference in poor infrastructure happens within city neighborhoods, not between them.
March 19, 2026
Original Paper
Multidimensional Infrastructure Deprivation In Urban Settings: A Comparative Analysis Across Diverse Informal Settlements
SSRN · 6437876
The Takeaway
Most international aid and government resources are allocated to specific 'poor' districts or regions. This data shows that because poverty is so hyper-local, district-level funding is a mathematical mismatch that consistently misses the most deprived households living right next to served ones.
From the abstract
Across the Global South, more than one billion people reside in informal settlements without adequate infrastructure. Prevailing interventions remain largely ineffective because they treat deprivation as a single construct and urban contexts as uniform. Consequently, interventions frequently miss the most deprived households. To inform more effective targeting, this study examines multidimensional infrastructure deprivation using data from 23,154 households across six Ghanaian urban cities. Spe