Overall poverty rate in Bangladesh has surged to 26.43 in 2024 from 24.73 percent estimated by the BBS in 2022 with extreme poverty rate rising to 6.63 percent from 6.06 percent, finds the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) after it carried out a perception survey in selected five districts.
The BIDS says persistent inflationary pressure, natural shocks like Covid and floods, and man-made factors like the Ukraine War and July uprising prompted the state-run research body to conduct the survey to help make informed policy decisions.
In a span of just two years, rural poverty rate found to be risen to 22.56 percent to 24.10 percent, while urban poverty situation worsened further jumping to 30.43 percent from 28.45 percent.
Further, urban areas show a higher proportion of extreme poor at 8.16 percent in 2024 compared to rural areas’ 5.75 percent.
BIDS researchers Mohammad Yunus and Binayak Sen jointly conducted the ‘Small Area Estimates of Poverty 2022: Trends and Disparities in Selected Districts, 2024’ survey in Dhaka, Khulna, Rangpur, Sylhet and Bandarban.
Information was collected from some 3,150 sample using a purposive sampling technique, while the districts were selected from the perspective of climate change hotspots like hilly, coastal, riverbank erosion, and haor areas.
The estimates reveal that 46.3 percent of the households experienced food insecurity at a moderate level in 2024 compared with 38.08 percent in 2022. Also, 5.36 percent of the households experienced severe food insecurity in 2024 compared with 4.29 percent in 2022.
Across the districts, the SAE poverty headcount estimates range between the highest at 25 percent in Bandarban and the lowest at 8.6 percent in Dhaka.
Bandarban registered a stagnant situation in extreme poor (4 percent in both years) and an increase in poor to 27.5 percent in 2024 from 22 percent in 2022.
Dhaka and Sylhet registered an increase in the proportion of extreme poor, Khulna and Rangpur registered a decline in the proportion of extreme poverty between the two periods.
Additionally, households in the rural areas showed higher optimism of 4.67 percent compared to 2.24 percent in urban areas. Rural households are slightly more hopeful (rural 74.67 percent vs urban 70.60 percent.
The headcount poverty index indicates that approximately 23.11 percent of the households live below the upper poverty line in the selected districts.
It is higher at 24.67 percent in the rural areas but lower at 20.43 percent in the urban areas. Using the upper poverty lines, the BBS estimated the poverty headcount ratios at 18.7 percent nationally with 20.5 percent in the rural areas and 14.7 percent in the urban areas.
Most of the households reported to be worse off in 2024 compared with 2022.
The exposure to at least one shock has increased by more than 3 percentage points to 28.63 percent from 25.17 percent.
The dissatisfaction rate in rural areas is higher at 72.96 percent compared to 64.49 percent in urban areas, suggesting better satisfaction outcomes in urban settings, possibly due to improved infrastructure, access to services and opportunities.
Majority households adopted negative coping mechanism to mitigate the adverse impacts of the shocks in 2022 and 2022
The overall trends reveal that help from friends and relatives and local government agencies increased slightly from 40.61 percent in 2022 to 41.69 percent in 2024 while changing food habits marginally increased from 34.05 percent in 2022 to 88.03 percent in 2024.
“Targeted interventions are needed in high-dissatisfaction regions through infrastructure development, economic opportunities and services,” said researcher Yunus, while unveiling the perception survey data at BIDS office on Monday.
According to him, rural dissatisfaction should be addressed through better access to education, healthcare and employment, while satisfaction in urban areas should be sustained white addressing existing dissatisfaction pockets.