Monitoring Poverty in Bangladesh: Toward More Effective Poverty Alleviation Programs

In the six months ending in April 1995, more than five million people fell below the poverty line in Bangladesh. During that period, agricultural production fluctuated, resulting in higher prices of staple foods such as rice, wheat, and pulses. Fortunately, by December 1995, most food prices had declined somewhat. As a result, the proportion of people living in poverty dropped from 48 to 46.8% — bringing the total number of urban and rural poor to 55.2 million.

These numbers seem to imply a lack of progress in Bangladesh's ongoing war on poverty. But the mere existence of such data offers a ray of hope for those who are fighting in the front lines. Launched in October 1994 by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the Poverty Monitoring Survey provides a twice-a-year snapshot of the extent, processes, and dynamics of poverty throughout the country — information which was previously unavailable to government planners.

MAP project

The BBS survey grew out of the Monitoring Adjustment and Poverty (MAP) project, which was initiated in Bangladesh by the Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP) in Dhaka. Sponsored by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Canadian International Development Agency, the ultimate goal of MAP is to help countries such as Bangladesh minimize the negative impact of macroeconomic and structural adjustment policies on the poor, through the design of more effective poverty alleviation programs.

According to Mustafa K. Mujeri, Head of Research at CIRDAP, the immediate goal of this work is to provide on a sustainable basis "adequate and timely information" on poverty to government officials. The statistical indicators used "help us identify the poor, and they reflect to a certain extent the gradations of poverty — i.e. who are more poor or less poor. They also give some clue to policy makers about the causes of poverty, such as labour market employment, diversification, and access to public expenditures."

Household expenditures survey

"When we started this project in 1990, there was only one systematic source of information on poverty available in Bangladesh, called the Household Expenditures Survey," said Dr Mujeri during a presentation at IDRC earlier this year. The survey was of little use to policy makers, however. First, it was conducted too infrequently — every five to ten years. Second, it was limited to information on income and expenditures. And third, the information was dated. It sometimes took up to five years to publish the results.

To address these problems, the MAP team began by hosting a brainstorming session to identify appropriate indicators of poverty. The session was attended by policy makers, researchers, "and everyone else concerned with poverty in Bangladesh," he said. "We ended up with a list of indicators in 12 major areas of concern, including: income, nutrition, health, education, housing, access to community services, access to land, people's participation, crisis coping capacity, economic diversification, employment, and public expenditure."

Toward sustainability

"Our second problem was to decide whether we should collect information on all of these areas and, if so, what the mechanisms for collection should be," continued Dr Mujeri. "We decided that some indicators should be monitored more frequently, while others could be monitored less frequently since they do not change very rapidly." After pilot-testing the poverty indicators, in partnership with the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, the team invited the Bureau of Statistics to participate. This ensured both national "ownership" of the MAP project and the sustainability of poverty monitoring efforts, because the Bangladesh government is investing its own money.

Since its official launch in 1994, the Poverty Monitoring Survey has been conducted on a regular basis, generally in April and October. (The first two surveys involved rural areas only; the first urban area survey was conducted in December 1995.) The results are released as official BBS publications. To complement these, CIRDAP is preparing technical reports that include an analysis of survey results, such as why and how poverty has changed. "We are also developing an information dissemination system that combines geographical information systems (GIS) and other technologies. This will make it possible to present the survey results in charts and graphs so that the implications will be more readily apparent," explained Dr Mujeri.

John Eberlee is the editor of IDRC Reports online.

Mustafa K. Mujeri, Head, Research Division, Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP), Chameli House, 17 Topkhana Road, GPO Box 2883, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh; Tel: (880-2) 956-8379 or 955-2430; Fax: (880-2) 956-2035; E-mail: rescir@citechco.net

Marie-Claude Martin, Senior Program Officer - Economics, Research Division, IDRC, 250 Albert Street, PO Box 8500, Ottawa, Ontario K1G 3H9, Canada; Tel: (613) 236-6163, ext. 2331; Fax: (613) 567-7748; E-mail: mmartin@idrc.ca

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Links to explore ...

Related IDRC articles and publications:

A Future for Social Policy in Asia, by Paul Icamina

Reconciling Ecological, Economic, and Social Imperatives, by Pattie LaCroix

The Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic and Adjustment Policies (MIMAP) PI

Additional resources:

Bangladesh Fact Sheet: 1991 Population Data

Monitoring Adjustment and Poverty (MAP) Bangladesh

IDRC Reports is published weekly on-line by the International Development Research Centre.
Its aim is to keep an international readership informed about the work IDRC supports in developing countries as well as other development issues of interest.

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Updated October 17, 1997. Please send your comments to editor of Reports.