Inequality in Access to COVID-19 Vaccines : Evidence from the Household Heads and Household Helps from Dhaka City

Inequality in vaccination has been perceived as a research problem in the recent COVID-19 pandemic. So far, this type of inequality has been investigated in the particular context of race, ethnicity, gender, regions in different parts of the world, with no study conducted so far in the context of Bangladesh, an important South Asian country. We have conducted an online purposive random sampling of 311 household heads in April 2021 from Dhaka, Bangladesh, with their respective domestic or household helps to examine the vaccination status across socioeconomic status, age, income, access to the internet, cellphone, laptop, or other computer devices, national identity card. Using univariate descriptive statistics, bivariate contingency table analysis, and multivariate logistic regression estimation, we find that in Dhaka, the largest megacity and the capital of Bangladesh, domestic or household workers above 40 years of age have mostly not taken COVID-19 vaccination at 5% level of significance. At the same time, their associated household heads are mostly vaccinated with two doses if they are above 40. Being a household head, access to cell phones, internet, and computer facilities are significant determinants to online registration and consequent COVID-19 vaccination. The results have posed a question regarding the efficacy of the ongoing vaccination drive and the observed inequality or vaccine gap, primarily driven by class differences, whereas the government policy towards vaccination was intended to be universal across classes