Begging in District 12 of Tehran and the Grand Bazaar

The begging is one of the social maladies. Special features of District 12 of Tehran municipality—particularly the concentration of traditional businesses in that area and also being a crowded area—lead us to choose this area for studying such a phenomenon. In this paper, the begging is studied by using the constructivist epistemology. The data is collected by questionnaire and evidence is analyzed by frequency percentage interpretation. The evidence of this study shows that women have a considerable proportion of the beggars in our sample (50.49%). This difference is larger in young beggars’ categories, and most of the young beggars are women. It is also shown that as education, level increases the percentage of beggar's number decreases. Exploring the causes of begging shows that poverty, morbidity, and unemployment are respectively the most important cause of the begging. While the results of the study imply that most of the beggars tend to work with income equivalence of the begging, the monthly average of beggar's income is close to the minimum wage proposed by the government. Accordingly, the creation of employment is the key solution for disappearance of the begging.