What exactly is squalor and why should I care?

[Budwise]

I know how to check squalor but what exactly is it and why should I care? Does it do anything bad besides angering the population? Should I make it a bigger deal than it is?

Honestly though, I think squalor is a huge mess but it could be discontent and whatnot.

[_Tristan_]

Why should you care ?

I often find squalor to cause the most unhappiness in any settlement (mostly cities) and one of the major cause of unrest.... So I think you should care if you don(t want your cities pop to turn to rioting..

Squalor is the result of the lack of sanitation in your cities/castles, so the more population, the greater risk of squalor...

The main effect of squalor is reducing population happiness, making cities harder to control...It is also one of the reason the plague might affect one settlement (other than the Black Plague which is scripted and happens no matter what)...In fact, getting the plague in a settlement is sometimes a good solution to getting rid of squalor if it kills a sufficient number of inhabitants

To fight it, there are two options : reducing the level of ppopulation (or at least the level of pop growth by raising taxes for example) or constructing health buildings.

[HoreTore]

Squalor represents the waste, littering, overpopulation and general unrulyness of the population. It is a constant factor you cannot decrease, except to build a higher level of walls. You can only counter it with increasing positive PO factors. The percentage of squalor follows the population number, but it is capped at 80% unrest(no cap for the pop growh side of squalor).

Note; there are some traits who affect squalor, like goodbuilder and badbuilder.

[ieyeasu]

Squalor is why I wait for 13xx to roll around and the plague to bring sweet, sweet relief.