Introduction

It has been established that undernutrition is not randomly distributed within a given population, but is a dimension of poverty (Basta, 1977; Hussain & Lunven, 1987; Lipton, 1983; Nabarro, 1984; Payne, 1987; Rao, 1985; Reichmanheim, 1988; Sukhatme, 1981; UNICEF, 1981). The ability of a household to command sufficient food resources is primarily dependent upon social and economic variables such as assets, employment and income.

In urban areas, households are often characterised by a dependence upon the market, not only for employment and food, but also for other basic needs. Several studies conducted in urban areas of developing countries have indicated undernutrition in children to be associated with low effective income (Aguillon et al., 1985; Azevedo, 1989; Mazur & Sanders, 1988; Murillo-Gonzalez, 1983; Victora et al., 1986; Wray & Aguirre, 1969), low levels of food expenditure (Wray & Aguirre, 1969), low levels of ownership of consumer durables (Azevedo, 1989; Pickering et al., 1985), or low levels on composite socioeconomic scores (Christiansen et al., 1975; Greiner & Latham, 1981; Zeitlin et al., 1978).

Rarely have such studies attempted to identify the types of urban livelihoods associated with low income and undernutrition. The aim of this paper is to describe patterns of household economic livelihood in one inner-city slum in the city of Khulna, Bangladesh, and to identify those patterns of livelihood that were most closely associated with nutritional vulnerability among both children and adults.