To What Extent Are Bangladesh's Recent Gains in Poverty Reduction Different from the Past?

The poor in Bangladesh are more likely to belong to households with a larger number of dependents and lower education among household members, be engaged in daily wage labor, own little land, and be less likely to receive remittances. This poverty...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kotikula, Aphichoke, Narayan, Ambar, Zaman, Hassan
Format: Policy Research Working Paper
Language:English
en_US
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2010/02/11739220/extent-bangladeshs-recent-gains-poverty-reduction-different-past
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19913
Description
Summary:The poor in Bangladesh are more likely to belong to households with a larger number of dependents and lower education among household members, be engaged in daily wage labor, own little land, and be less likely to receive remittances. This poverty profile for 2005 is similar to the profile in the mid-1980s and hence at first glance it would appear that little has changed over time. A closer look at national household survey data suggests a more nuanced story. This paper uses the latest two rounds of the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey to decompose the micro-determinants of poverty reduction between 2000 and 2005, closely following a similar analysis using five earlier rounds of the Survey. The comparison of results shows that the spatial distribution of poverty seen in earlier decades has changed with time and the drivers of poverty reduction are different in several respects.