Abstract

Poor parliamentary community engagement is often attributed to the physical distance between parliamentarians and their constituencies. This paper examines how parliamentarian community engagement measured by whether a parliamentarian resides in their constituency affects household multidimensional poverty, both directly and indirectly through public social investments. Using causal mediation analysis on Round 5 of the Integrated Household Survey (2019–2020), we find that households with a resident parliamentarian are less likely to experience multidimensional poverty due to public social investments.

Publication status

Published - 2026