Ethnicity and Rural-Urban Disparities in Residential Facility across Provinces in Nepal

Housing inequality has long been recognized as a central dimension of social stratification, intersecting with class, ethnicity, migration, and geography. International scholarship demonstrates that access to housing is shaped not only by individual socioeconomic factors but also by broader institutional, political, and historical processes. Studies from the United States reveal that minority households, particularly Blacks and Hispanics, face persistent disadvantages in housing equity even when controlling for socioeconomic status, while evidence from the UK highlights how postwar migrants were steered into specific neighborhoods by structural barriers in the housing system. In contrast, postwar Western Europe and South Korea illustrate how large-scale state interventions expanded public housing, though such policies were influenced by developmental strategies, political contestation, and institutional consensus. These global cases highlight that housing inequality reflects entrenched patterns of privilege and exclusion, rather than being a neutral outcome of market dynamics. Based on the analysis of national level survey data of Nepal Living Standard Survey (NLSS-IV) of 2022/23 this paper argues that the findings from Nepal align with these broader dynamics, revealing strong associations between ethnicity, geography, and deprivation. In Kathmandu, overall deprivation is relatively low, yet marginalized groups—particularly Hill Dalits, Madhesh/Tarai Dalits, Janajatis, and religious or linguistic minorities—experience significantly higher levels of disadvantage compared to Hill castes. Outside the capital, deprivation intensifies, with Madhesh/Tarai Dalits facing extreme levels of marginalization in both urban and rural areas. Rural Nepal records the highest deprivation overall, compounding the vulnerability of disadvantaged groups due to limited access to resources and opportunities. Chi-square results confirm that these patterns are statistically significant, demonstrating that deprivation is not randomly distributed but structurally embedded. Taken together, the analysis underscores how housing and social inequality in Nepal reflect broader global patterns of stratification, where historically dominant groups retain systemic advantages while marginalized communities continue to face exclusion across both urban and rural settings.