Resource information
The purpose of this report is to
document some of the aforementioned achievements over the
2000-2010 decade and to illustrate their collective impact
on poverty in Bangladesh. Analysis is undertaken to identify
which factors contributed to the rapid decline in poverty
over time. The main limitation of this report is that the
analysis is based on a limited number of data sources, which
do not cover all aspects of the poverty reduction process.
Nevertheless, to the extent possible, the analysis covers
the key drivers of poverty reduction over what has been a
remarkable decade for Bangladesh. The report is organized
into four parts. Part one focuses on explaining poverty
patterns observed over the 2000-2010 period, noting
qualitative differences between the first and second half of
the decade. The analysis in chapter one offers poverty
projections based on survey data from this period. Chapter
two describes some key characteristics of the poor. Using
poverty decomposition methodology, part two identifies the
main drivers of the poverty reduction experienced over the
last decade. Chapter three shows that the two most important
contributors to poverty reduction over the 2000-2010 periods
were the growth of labor income and the declining dependency
ratio. The remaining two chapters in this section focus on
labor income and demographic factors to understand their
respective linkages to poverty. The past few years have
underscored the importance of global factors affecting
country-level outcomes. However, the series of shocks that
affected Bangladesh in 2007-2008 did not significantly slow
down the speed of poverty reduction. In Chapters six and
seven of part three, the report attempts to uncover some of
the reasons underlying Bangladesh's resilience to these
global shocks as well as the way in which poor households
cope with seasonal shocks, which are a permanent feature of
some rural parts of the country, namely Rangpur. Chapters
eight and nine explore the role of safety nets and
microfinance in helping households deal with shocks and
poverty. In part four, chapter ten revisits one of the key
findings of the World Bank poverty assessment of 2005
(published in 2008).
