IMPACT OF VARIOUS COSTS ON THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF KILN LABOUR: A CASE STUDY OF NORTH SINDH

Abstract

Cost of living is sum of expenses that are incurred to sustain life. It tells about standard of living of a person or household. Present paper is an attempt to estimate the impact of different costs on living quality of kiln labour. Here cost of living is the estimated as dependent variable with 7 independent indexed variables. The independent variables are cost of transport, utility, food, children education, personal health, family health and loan . Rent is not included in this model because kiln labour don’t pay rent, rather they live in their own houses. Given the long working hours and poor work conditions, the paper justifies the cost of living with given variables. The Results endorse 58.4% explanatory power with value of R2 value of 0.584 with significant model ANOVA at 0.035 P-value. There are 2 significant positive variables (education expenses, and cost of family health), 3 significant negative variables (cost of utilities, cost on food, and cost of loan) and 2 statistically insignificant variables (cost of transport and cost of personal health) . For checking strength of R2 separately all costs were regressed with dependent variable and it was found that R2 is relatively good indicator for food cost and for cost of utilities it is the worst predictor.