Based on an individual action and systems theoretical approach, this study provides new insights into the development dynamics of the Bangladesh agrarian society. The work explains why and how Bangladesh's rural economy and society has been able to maintain its poverty-level equilibrium.
This paper analyzes poverty dynamics in rural Bangladesh using a nationally representative panel dataset of 5,260 rural households interviewed in 2011/12 and 2015. We find that education, savings, assets, non-farm employment, substantial safety net transfers, and women’s empowerment are key factors in breaking persistent poverty; and savings, non-farm engagement, and substantial safety net transfers prevent households from falling into poverty. The results are consistent across multinomial logit, logit, and simultaneous quantile regression models. Thus, policies and programs that address the determinants of persistent and transient poverty identified in this study hold promise for sustained poverty reduction in rural Bangladesh.
Why are poor countries poor and rich countries rich? How are wealth and poverty related to changes in nutrition, health, life expectancy, education, population growth and politics? This modern, non-technical 2005 introduction to development studies explores the dynamics of socio-economic development and stagnation in developing countries. Taking a quantitative and comparative approach to contemporary debates within their broader context, Szirmai examines historical, institutional, demographic, sociological, political and cultural factors. Key chapters focus on economic growth, technological change, industrialisation, agricultural development, and consider social dimensions such as population growth, health and education. Each chapter contains comparative statistics on trends from a sample of twenty-nine developing countries. This rich statistical database allows students to strengthen their understanding of comparative development experiences. Assuming no prior knowledge of economics the book is suited for use in inter-disciplinary development studies programmes as well as economics courses, and will also interest practitioners pursuing careers in developing countries.
This book answers key questions about environment, people and their shared future in deltas. It develops a systematic and holistic approach for policy-orientated analysis for the future of these regions. It does so by focusing on ecosystem services in the world’s largest, most populous and most iconic delta region, that of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. The book covers the conceptual basis, research approaches and challenges, while also providing a methodology for integration across multiple disciplines, offering a potential prototype for assessments of deltas worldwide. Ecosystem Services for Well-Being in Deltas analyses changing ecosystem services in deltas; the health and well-being of people reliant on them; the continued central role of agriculture and fishing; and the implications of aquaculture in such environments.The analysis is brought together in an integrated and accessible way to examine the future of the Ganges Brahmaputra delta based on a near decade of research by a team of the world’s leading scientists on deltas and their human and environmental dimensions. This book is essential reading for students and academics within the fields of Environmental Geography, Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy focused on solving the world’s most critical challenges of balancing humans with their environments. This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This book evaluates Bangladesh’s impressive economic and social progress, more often referred to as a ‘development surprise’. In doing so, the book examines the gap in existing explanations of Bangladesh’s development and then offers an empirically informed analysis of a range of distinctive factors, policies, and actions that have individually and collectively contributed to the progress of Bangladesh. In an inclusive way, the book covers the developmental role, relation, and impact of poverty reduction, access to finance, progress in education and social empowerment, reduction in the climatic vulnerability, and evolving sectoral growth activities in the agriculture, garments, and light industries. It also takes into account the important role of the government and NGOs in the development process, identifies bottlenecks and challenges to Bangladesh’s future development path and suggests measures to overcome them. By providing an inclusive narrative to theorize Bangladesh’s development, which is still missing in the public discourse, this book posits that Bangladesh per se can offer a development model to other developing countries.
Although the Bangladeshi economy continues to be agriculture-based, this formerly firm foundation is undergoing immense changes and shifts. The reasons for this could be demographic pressures and the division and fragmentation of farmland, which is causing landlessness and a higher rate of migration to the cities. Migration has not been limited to the cities within Bangladesh, but also extended to other global cities. Currently Bangladesh is one of the main origin countries for migrant workers in the world. This book dwells upon gendered lives and livelihoods, exploring the dynamics of this transformation from a subsistence economy into a capitalist one, with an eye on those areas that have been under-researched thus far. The focus on multiple dimensions of the everyday lives of women explored here has revealed the different facets of social transformation and helped us to better understand these processes of change. The essays in this anthology are microcosmic studies deliberately chosen to demonstrate the understated realities of peripheral economies. The subjects vary from indigenous women engaged in jhum cultivation, Dalit women embedded in caste-specific work structures and relations, female-headed households in rural areas, and elderly women from city slums. All of the studies are a product of original fieldwork that has produced rich qualitative data and a limited amount of quantitative data. It is expected that the analysis of such data will be a precursor to theory-building efforts in this vital area as well as assisting in future policymaking discourses.
The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty builds a common scholarly ground in the study of poverty by bringing together an international, inter-disciplinary group of scholars to provide their perspectives on the issue. Contributors engage in discussions about the leading theories and conceptual debates regarding poverty, the most salient topics in poverty research, and the far-reaching consequences of poverty on the individual and societal level.
Securing Food for All in Bangladesh presents an array of research that collectively address four broad issues: (1) agricultural technology adoption; (2) input use and agricultural productivity; (3) food security and output market; and (4) poverty, food security, and women’s empowerment. The fifteen chapters of the book address diverse aspects within these four themes. Access to sufficient food by all people at all times to meet their dietary needs is a matter of critical importance. Despite declining arable agricultural land, Bangladesh has made commendable progress in boosting domestic food production. The growth in overall food production has been keeping ahead of population growth, resulting in higher per capita availability of food over time. In the early 1970s, Bangladesh was a food-deficit country with a population of about 75 million. Today, the population is 165 million, and the country is now self-sufficient in rice production, which has tripled over the past three decades. Along with enhanced food production, increased income has improved people’s access to food. Furthermore, nutritional outcomes have improved significantly. Nevertheless, the challenges to food and nutrition security remain formidable. Future agricultural growth and food and nutrition security are threatened by population growth, worsening soil fertility, diminishing access to land and other scarce natural resources, increasing vulnerability of crop varieties to pests and diseases, and persistent poverty leading to poor access to food. In addition, the impacts of climate change—an increase in the incidence of natural disasters, sea intrusion, and salinity—will exacerbate food and nutrition insecurity in the coming decades if corrective measures are not taken. Aligned with this context, the authors of the book explore policy options and strategies for developing agriculture and improving food security in Bangladesh. Securing Food for All in Bangladesh, with its breadth and scope, will be an invaluable resource for policymakers, researchers, and students dedicated to improving people’s livelihoods in Bangladesh.
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 economic growth in the macroeconomy during this time failed to improve the poverty situation in rural Bangladesh.