Data journalism final project · MSJ 3253 · December 22, 2025

The Bachelor Economy

A web-first retelling of your reported piece on the cost of living solo in Dhaka. This version translates the original report into a more readable digital feature with quick stats, a year slider, and a neighbourhood comparison that makes the bachelor penalty easier to grasp at a glance.

Focus Housing discrimination, food inflation, and graduate precarity in Dhaka

Built from Course report, interview material, scraped rental trends, and supporting economic context

Source file Read the PDF version

Reported feature adaptation Dhaka housing Data + interviews + explanatory visuals

At the edge of formal rental life in Dhaka, unmarried young workers often enter a different market altogether. They do not rent homes so much as negotiate for tolerable crowding: a partitioned corner, a shared mess seat, a negotiated meal rate, a bundle of invisible service costs, and a monthly remainder too thin to feel like adulthood.

This story follows that squeeze. It begins with cramped rooms and hurried mornings, then moves outward into a wider structure of exclusion: landlords who do not want bachelors, flat owners who can earn more by selling beds than space, wages that have barely moved, and a graduate economy where the idea of living alone becomes a luxury instead of a basic transition.

The bachelor penalty is not only social stigma. It is a pricing system.

up to 90 Tk per sq. ft. for bachelor mess living

21.6 Average Tk per sq. ft. for families

65-70 Typical 2025 meal rate in Tk

20k-25k Sticky entry salary range

The everyday scene

In the original report, the story opens at 6:30 AM with Tanvir Ahmed waking up in a plywood-partitioned cabin in a dining room. That opening works because it makes the economics physical. The costs are not abstract. They shape sleep, privacy, morning routines, access to a bathroom, food choices, and the amount of money left after one ordinary commute.

That is the right tone for a journalism project page too. People should be able to read it like a feature story first, then use the visuals to see scale, change, and comparison. The interaction should clarify the reporting, not replace it.

Tanvir's room

A 42 sq. ft. partitioned space with no window, rented as survival rather than choice.

Raihan's compromise

A shared arrangement with three others that lowers cost only by erasing privacy.

What changes

The more insecure the rental access, the more daily life gets reorganized around scarcity.

Interactive module

Track the squeeze over time

Illustrative figures distilled from the project narrative for web presentation.

2020 Selected year

Tk 38 Meal rate

Tk 4,200 Mess seat rent

Tk 6,300 Monthly remainder

Family rent per sq. ft. Tk 18

Bachelor effective rate per sq. ft. Tk 58

Move from 2020 to 2025

Early warning signs

Meal rates are still comparatively lower, but shared living is already functioning as a workaround for exclusion from standard family-oriented rentals.

Interactive module

Read three monthly survival budgets

Profile-based illustration built from the reporting logic of the story.

Tk 22,000 Monthly income

Tk 3,000 Remainder

25% Spent on rent/seat

31% Spent on food

Tanvir has almost no slack in the month

By the time rent, food, transport, and scattered service charges are counted, the margin left for emergencies or savings is too small to feel secure.

Interactive module

Compare the bachelor penalty by neighbourhood

Family monthly flat Tk 22,000

Bachelor collective take from same space Tk 60,000

Density keeps Mirpur relatively reachable

Mirpur remains the pressure valve for young renters, but affordability comes from crowding. The landlord earns far more by selling seats than by renting the flat to one family.

Illustrative view: 1,000 sq. ft. family rent versus high-density bachelor occupancy.

The hidden service tax

The reporting is especially strong when it moves beyond rent and shows how bachelor life depends on fragmented, informal payments: a maid's share, garbage pickup, building security expectations, late-night tips, volatile meal systems, and all the small cash leaks that formal housing language often ignores.

Those details matter because they change the reader's understanding of what “affordable” means. A mess seat that looks cheaper than a family flat may still be financially exhausting once these hidden costs accumulate month after month.

Voices inside the structure

“The moment I say I am unmarried, the conversation ends.”

Tanvir Ahmed · housing access

Flat-sharing becomes a safety net when one salary cannot absorb shocks alone.

Rafsan Mahmud Hoque · monthly precarity

The city keeps pulling graduates in, even when the price of entry keeps rising.

Raihan · migration to Dhaka

How the web version is structured

The article arc now works in three layers. First, a readable feature-story spine introduces the social world of the piece. Second, interactive visual modules show trend, budget pressure, and neighbourhood comparison. Third, methods notes at the end explain where the evidence comes from and how the analysis was framed.

That structure gives the project page the feel of a data-journalism report rather than a portfolio summary. A reader can either move straight through it like a story or pause inside the visuals and compare patterns.

Methods and reporting notes

Rental trends were compared across public Facebook rental groups between December 2020 and December 2025.
Meal-rate information was crowdsourced through student and peer networks to ground inflation in everyday experience.
Interviews included Tanvir Ahmed, Rafsan Mahmud Hoque, Raihan, and expert voices from BIP, CPD, and REHAB.
This web version uses a simplified interactive layer to communicate patterns from the project without replacing the full report.