Poverty in Bangladesh

Signing a white band in Bangladesh © Millennium Campaign

A combination of generous international aid since 1990, a dynamic civil society culture and sympathetic government policies has created a generally positive outlook for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Bangladesh. In a number of areas, progress is more rapid than in neighbouring India or Pakistan. A wide range of government food and cash safety net schemes reached over 20 million people in 2007.

Nevertheless, with its large population and overcrowded cities, Bangladesh remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Poverty is assessed in a household income and expenditure survey held every five years. The most recent survey in 2005 found 40% of the population to be below the poverty line, measured by the cost of essential food and basic needs, compared with 59% in 1991, the MDG baseline year. Progress has been uneven, with the most severe poverty located in urban slums and in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Just under 20% of the population falls into the category of extreme poverty, lacking resources to acquire a minimum dietary intake.

Bangladeshi girl in school © Ron Gilling/Panos Pictures / People & the Planet

Gender equality in primary school enrolment has already been attained and most children take advantage of free primary education. However, poor teaching quality and the pressures of poverty have rocketed the drop-out rate to an alarming 47%. A positive initiative was the planned National Women’s Development Policy, a move to legislate for improved property rights for women and quotas for certain decision-making positions. However, strong protests by religious interests claiming that the move would be “anti-Islamic” were sufficient for the government to lose interest in the proposal. Legislation to abolish child labour has also been neglected, even for those in traditional craft industries ranked as hazardous occupations. Estimates suggest that as much as 15% of the entire Bangladesh workforce is comprised of children.

The former Director of the Millennium Project, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, has suggested an MDG price tag for Bangladesh of $4 billion per annum, far more than current levels of aid. An alternative perspective is the suggestion that the Goals cannot be achieved without universal access to electricity. Current coverage is barely more than 20%. The government's target of access for all by 2020 is a vision that has been priced at $16 billion.

Health in Bangladesh

Bangladeshi woman and child © Shahidul Alam/Drik / New Internationalist

Although the government provides reasonable coverage of community health workers and health centres, there are worries over the quality of staff and whether payment for treatment tends to exclude the poorest families. A World Bank 2007 report pointed to the fact that all health workers are engaged by central government and lack the culture of local accountability seen in the NGO sector which is heavily engaged in both health and education programmes in Bangladesh.

Despite these shortcomings, key health indicators such as child and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly since 1990 and the relevant MDGs are considered likely to be achieved. However, the rate of improvement has slowed in recent years and there remains concern about early marriage for girls and the high incidence of births at home dependent on under-qualified supervision. Prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh is very low at less than 0.1% although the authorities accept that data is unreliable and that high risk factors remain present.

A key contributor to the country’s health status will be the dramatic advance in access to safe sanitation. Defying gloomy progress reports elsewhere in the world, Bangladesh claims to be close to achieving a target of universal sanitation by 2010 which goes far beyond the standard MDG in both degree and timetable. According to government figures, in the space of 3-4 years, rural access has increased from below 30% to over 80%.

Official statistics for access to safe drinking water and sanitation in the cities are impressive but may exclude unregistered slum-dwellers whose rights are not recognised. Access to safe drinking water in rural areas has dropped from 93% to 79% since 1990 due to the exposure of arsenic-bearing rocks in tube-wells. This contamination is not unique to Bangladesh but has its most concentrated impact with over 80 million people considered to be at high risk of arsenic-related diseases which kill an estimated 270,000 each year.
Food Security in Bangladesh

Bangladeshi farmer on his 'floating garden' © Siraj / Machizo

Decisive progress in health standards is held back by the prevailing degree of malnutrition in Bangladesh where poor households are obliged to spend a large proportion of their income on food. In 2005, almost 40% of children under five were underweight. The poorest rural families tend to go hungry in periods between the twice-yearly sewing and harvesting when other work is difficult to find. The World Food Programme is active in the country, aiming to provide food aid to as many as 10 million people in 2009.

Bangladesh is able to grow only about 90% of its needs for rice in a typical year, making the country the world’s 4th largest importer of the grain. 2007 and 2008 have been very untypical years. In 2007 serious floods preceded the devastating Cyclone Sidr and together destroyed more than 5% of the staple rice crop. In 2008 sharp increases in food prices may plunge 4 million people below the poverty line, according to World Bank estimates, despite considerable endeavour by the Bangladesh government to soften the blow.
Climate Change in Bangladesh

Cyclone Sidr © IRIN News

If climate change proves to be the force that shapes the 21st century, then Bangladesh offers an early vision of our future. Its land is crossed with waterways, defensive dykes and structures; roads and houses are constructed above ground level; early warning systems and emergency shelters have already protected tens of thousands of lives from Cyclone Sidr. The government has published a 10 year action plan which refers to its “pro-poor, climate resilient and low-carbon development strategy”. It plans to establish a “climate change cell” in every ministry and has set up a National Climate Change Fund into which generous bilateral donations have already been made towards the ambitious $5 billion target.

Flood in Bangladesh © Kamrul Hassan/Machizo

With one of the lowest per capita levels of energy consumption in the world, Bangladesh is a major point of reference for the injustice of climate change. Although alarmist media projections are typically based on a rise in sea level well beyond the worst case 2100 scenario outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), nevertheless there is a real risk that significant land mass will be lost, forcing the migration of large numbers of people. In a climate pincer movement from the north, retreating Himalayan glaciers create great uncertainty in the management of dozens of rivers that flow through Bangladesh into the Bay of Bengal. Shorter but more severe monsoons, longer periods of drought, and more violent tropical storms, complete the roll call of climate predictions for Bangladesh. Cyclone Sidr killed 3,500 people and destroyed over half a million homes in 2007.

The impact on food security, over and above the loss of productive land by sea and river erosion, is the principal concern. The IPCC has predicted a small drop in rice yields by 2050 but over 30% for wheat. New crop varieties will be tested and the challenge of finding new livelihoods is already familiar to many households.
The Economy in Bangladesh

The country has for years languished at or close to the very bottom of the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International and life for ordinary citizens is punctuated by demands for bribes, draining the formal economy by an estimated 2% of GDP. Ironically, many Bangladeshis feel that the country's dependence on generous foreign aid may itself feed a culture of dishonesty - through its tendency to create a micro-economy managed by NGO staff, politicians, bureaucrats, consultants and contractors - all wrestling with the potential conflict of personal benefit in the name of development and poverty alleviation.

Not that conventional instruments of economic growth have been any more successful; years of shoehorning liberal market policy reforms into Bangladesh may have succeeded in boosting traditional measures of growth but have also aggravated divisions between rich and poor. Migration to the bulging urban slums is likely to continue as 70% of the population remains dependent on agriculture, an unsustainable scenario in one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Bangladesh is the home of microcredit, an economic model for creating livelihoods for the poor, and women especially, that has spread across the developing world. The pioneering work of the Grameen Bank, and its founder Dr. Muhammad Yunus, was recognised through the award of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, an unprecedented recognition of the contribution of poverty alleviation to the prevention of conflict.

Help us to include all developing countries
Many countries are missing from our range of Country Briefings. OneWorld wants to fill these gaps as part of our efforts to improve understanding of the issues faced by developing countries. We receive no funding for the production of our educational resources. Every small contribution helps!