Poverty In Bangladesh

Contents1. What Is Poverty?

2. General Overview of the Bangladesh Economic

3. Rural and Urban Poverty

4. Causes of Rural and Urban Poverty

5. Steps for Poverty Alleviation in Bangladesh

What is Poverty ?Poverty is pronounced deprivation in

well-being and comprises many dimension. It includes low income and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clear water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, and lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life.

General Overview of the Bangladesh Economic

Even though there are political instability, poor infrastructure, corruption, insufficient power supplies, and slow implementation of economic reforms, the economy has grown 5-6% per year since 1996. However, Bangladesh still remains a poor, overpopulated, and inefficiently-governed nation with about 45% of the Bangladeshis being employed in the agriculture sector.

Rural and Urban Poverty

The population in Bangladesh is predominantly rural, with almost 80% of the population living in the rural areas. Many of them live in remote areas that lack services such as education, health clinics and adequate roads, particularly road links to markets. They suffer from persistent food insecurity, own no land and assets, are often uneducated and may also suffer serious illnesses or disabilities. Women are among the poorest of the rural poor, especially when they are the sole heads of their households. They suffer discrimination, have few earning opportunities.

In the urban areas, there is about 37% of the urban population living below national poverty line. For those living in urban areas, especially the capital Dhaka, and major industrial cities such as Chittagong, Khulna, and Rajshahi, they enjoy a better standard of living, with electricity, gas, and clean water supplies. Despite this, there is still a significant proportion of Bangladeshis living in slums that fall apart during the monsoon season and have no regular electricity, limited access to health care and to clean drinking water.

One of the main causes of rural poverty is due the country’s geographical and demographic characteristics. A large proportion of the country is low-lying, and thus is at a high risk to flooding. Many of the rural poor live in areas that are prone to extreme annual flooding which cause huge damage to their crops, homes and livelihoods. These natural disasters also cause outbreaks of cholera and other waterborne and diarrheal diseases such as dengue and malaria which will affect them physically and lower their productivity levels.  The causes of urban poverty are due to the limited employment opportunities, degraded environment, and bad housing and sanitation. The urban poor hold jobs that are labor demanding, thus affecting their health conditions. Therefore, the urban poor are in a difficult situation to escape poverty.

Causes of Rural and Urban Poverty

Steps for Poverty Alleviation in Bangladesh

i. Trends in the Economy

ii. Regional Trends in Poverty

iii.Mortality and Health Indicators

iv.Literacy Rates in Bangladesh

TRENDS IN ECONOMY

Bangladesh made noteworthy progress in poverty reduction and the attainment of “Millennium Development Goals” during the 1990-2000 period in spite of pitfalls such as instability, inefficiency, leakage, mis-targeting and erosion of regulatory standards. Economic growth was most robust in the industrial sector, which increased in importance from 21 percent to 26 percent of GDP, with its real GDP rising by an impressive 86 percent during the nineties. The export-oriented ready-made garment (RMG) sector recorded double-digit annual growth. Even within the agricultural sector, however, notable achievements marked the period. The country attained food grain self-sufficiency in FY2000 and estimated aggregate production reached approximately 25 million tons. Despite its declining importance, continues to be the main source of employment in Bangladesh.

REGIONAL TRENDS IN POVERTY

While poverty reduction has occurred for both rural and urban areas, a disaggregation by geographic regions reveals sharp regional variations. The largest decline in poverty incidence occurred for the Dhaka division, followed by Chittagong and Sylhet. By contrast, poverty headcount stagnated in Barisal and increased slightly for Khulna. As a result of this unequal pattern of poverty reduction, regional differences were quite sharp in 2005. The poverty headcount ranged from a low of 32 percent in Dhaka and 34 percent in Chittagong and Sylhet, to over 50 percent in Barisal and Rajshahi.

Mortality and Health Indicators

Deprivation in health and deprivation in nutrition are the two most important causes and consequences of poverty. The report cites three principal health-problems of Bangladesh: over population, malnutrition and communicable diseases. Children, women and the poor constitute the high risk-groups for ill health and the poorest households bear a disproportionate share of the burden of ill health; their mortality rate is 85 percent higher than that of the richest households. The major objectives of policies of the sector are to reduce mortality and to improve nutritional status, especially of women and children, the elderly and the poor by providing fair access to food, water and sanitation. The Government policy seeks to create conditions whereby people of Bangladesh have the opportunity to reach and maintain the highest attainable level of health. Since the present level of public resources devoted to the health sector falls far short of the requirements, policies are to be designed to harness the resources of the private sector for investing in the health sector.

LITERACY RATES IN BANGLADESH

In 2005, the national literacy rate in Bangladesh was 51.9 percent; in rural areas, 46.7 percent of the population is literate and in urban areas 67.9 percent. 

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