Does poverty cause environmental degradation? Evidence from waste management practices of the squatter and low‐cost flat housholds in Kuala Lumpur

This study examines whether or not the waste management practices of the poor households living in squatters and low‐cost flats in Kuala Lumpur are conducive to the environment. With the aim of accomplishing the above, the study empirically assesses knowledge, attitude and behaviour of the urban poor concerning their household solid waste management. With primary data collected from the level of living condition and waste management practices of the urban poor, the study employed a multiplicity of statistical techniques such as t‐tests of equality of means, one‐way analysis of variance, chi‐square ‘likelihood ratio’ tests, and descriptive statistics. The findings of the study provide evidence to the effect that poverty does not cause environmental degradation as the knowledge, attitude, and behaviour of the urban poor concerning solid waste management are found to have been conducive to the environment. The study suggests that the problems of poverty and environment need to be seen differently as the causal relationship between the two does actually depend on the level of socioeconomic profile and the type of environmental practices of a particular group of community