Measuring Poverty and its Associated Factors in Different Backward Regions of Bangladesh

Abstract

Poverty is one of the major problems for a developing country and it is much more complex in the backward regions such as Monga, Haor, Char, Hilly, Costal areas, etc. Because of the complexity of this problem, governments often fail to execute proper policies to get rid of poverty in these regions. Thus, the present study aims to discuss the poverty measurement technique being used in and the factors associated with poverty in these regions. The data for this study is extracted from Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2010, conducted by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). Poverty in Bangladesh was earlier measured by direct calorie intake (DCI) method. The food energy intake (FEI) method was first used in the Poverty Monitoring Survey 1995. The cost of basic need (CBN) method is used in this study to measure poverty which was first used in HIES 1995-1996 and then in HIES-2000. Besides, two-level binary logistic regression is used to identify the factors associated with poverty. The analyses found that the households of the regions Monga, Haor, Hilly, Char and Costal areas were below upper poverty line (poor) were 79%, 50%, 48%, 66%, and 39% respectively and the households of the regions Monga, Haor, Hilly, Char and Costal areas were below lower poverty line (extreme poor) were 68%, 37%, 30%, 53%, and 26% respectively. The potential factors having significant association with poverty were found to be age and education of household head, specific region, household size, household types, number of dependents, per capita income, household own land, access to electricity, amount of cultivable land, engagement in livestock, engagement in fishing and farm forestry, household non-agricultural assets, remittance receiving from outside, number of male and female earner in the family.