Pk. Md. Motiur Rahman – författare

This book examines rural poverty in Bangladesh. Based on detailed empirical research and surveys of households in Bangladesh, it provides an accurate portrait of the everyday situations faced by the rural poor in Bangladesh today, covering all aspects of household behaviour. All of the key issues are explored, including health, nutrition, housing conditions, human capital, household asset and liabilities, gender issues, livelihood strategies, distribution of household income and expenditure, social capital, intergenerational mobility of the chronically poor, women’s mobility, shocks and coping strategies, and vulnerability to poverty. The book focuses in particular on the poorest of the poor households, the chronically poor, seen by many in the development community to be the core of the problem of poverty. It shows that the basic characteristics of the chronically poor households in rural Bangladesh are: more heavily female-headed households, higher dependency ratio of children in demographic composition, and dominated by lower levels of assets, shorter years of schooling and limited employment opportunity. Throughout, it draws precise conclusions on the basis of quantitative data, which makes this book an important resource for policy-makers and development practitioners, as well as students and researchers.

This book examines rural poverty in Bangladesh. Based on detailed empirical research and surveys of households in Bangladesh, it provides an accurate portrait of the everyday situations faced by the rural poor in Bangladesh today, covering all aspects of household behaviour. All of the key issues are explored, including health, nutrition, housing conditions, human capital, household asset and liabilities, gender issues, livelihood strategies, distribution of household income and expenditure, social capital, intergenerational mobility of the chronically poor, women’s mobility, shocks and coping strategies, and vulnerability to poverty. The book focuses in particular on the poorest of the poor households, the chronically poor, seen by many in the development community to be the core of the problem of poverty. It shows that the basic characteristics of the chronically poor households in rural Bangladesh are: more heavily female-headed households, higher dependency ratio of children in demographic composition, and dominated by lower levels of assets, shorter years of schooling and limited employment opportunity. Throughout, it draws precise conclusions on the basis of quantitative data, which makes this book an important resource for policy-makers and development practitioners, as well as students and researchers.

The study of poverty dynamics is important for effective poverty alleviation policies because the changes in income poverty are also accompanied by changes in socioeconomic factors such as literacy, gender parity in school, health care, infant mortality, and asset holdings. In order to examine the dynamics of poverty, information from 1,212 households in 32 rural villages in Bangladesh was collected in December 2004 and December 2009. This book reports the analytical results from quantitative and qualitative surveys from the same households at two points of time, which yielded the panel data for understanding the changes in situations of poverty.

Efforts have been made to include the most recent research from diverse disciplines including economics, statistics, anthropology, education, health care, and vulnerability study. Specifically, findings from logistic regression analysis, polychoric principal component analysis, kernel density function, income mobility with the help of the Markov chain model, and child nutrition status from anthropometric measures have been presented.

Asset holdings and liabilities of the chronically poor as well as those of three other economic groups (the descending non-poor, the ascending poor, and the non-poor) are analyzed statistically. The degrees of vulnerability to poverty are examined by years of schooling, landholding size, gender of household head, social capital, and occupation. The multiple logistic regression model was used to identify important risk factors for a household’s vulnerability.

In 2009, some of the basic characteristics of the chronically poor were: higher percentage and number of female-headed households, higher dependency ratio, lower levels of education, fewer years of schooling, and limited employment. There was a low degree of mobility of households from one poverty status to another in the  period 2004-2009, implying that the process of economic development and high economicgrowth in the macroeconomy during this time failed to improve the poverty situation in rural Bangladesh.