Extreme poverty remains a challenge in Bangladesh despite reductions in overall poverty. The extreme poor have eroded assets, malnutrition, health issues, and exclusion from services. Standard poverty reduction strategies do not work for them due to assumptions about capacity and opportunities that do not apply. A new approach is needed that combines subsistence support, safety nets, health care, education to break intergenerational poverty cycles. Social protection including unconditional transfers is imperative for the most vulnerable. A pro-poor political settlement is needed to fund prevention, protection and promotion through expanded taxation.

1. _______________________________________
Extreme Poverty in Bangladesh: Lesson
Learning and Reflections
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2. Background
• Extreme Poverty Programme (2008-2015)
• Challenge Fund that works with 36 partner
NGOs
• Aim: to assist 1 million out of extreme
poverty
• Core components: scale fund, innovation,
lesson learning and advocacy

3. Background

4. Bangladesh: Poverty trends
and dynamics
• Continued reduction in proportion of
people living in income poverty (75% in
1970s to 40% in 2005 to 31.5% in 2010).
• Contributing factors: stable growth rates,
relatively low inflation, inward remittances,
expansion of infrastructure, new
employment opportunities, improvements
in human development indicators

5. Poverty trends and dynamics
• But numbers living in poverty (31.5%) and
extreme poverty (17.6%) are still very high;
• Impact of rising inequality is an unknown;
• Regional variations highlight familiar and less
familiar spatial dimensions in the distribution
of (rural-urban; east-west; ecologically fragile
locations);

6. Poverty trends and dynamics
• Convergence of poverties: upazilas with
highest levels of poverty likely to be more
prone to natural disasters; have lower
agricultural wages; show lower levels of
education attainment and have limited access
to markets and….. Have greater concentrations
of ‘extreme poor’ (BBS 2009)

7. Characteristics of Extreme
Poverty
• Asset base eroded total worth of all assets
averaged 2286 Taka, average 2,700 Tk
income
• Acute malnutrition, especially among
children 85% of children wasted, stunted,
anaemic, underweight.
• Chronic health related problems (34% with
chronic illness/disability)

8. Characteristics of Extreme
Poverty
• Exclusion from basic services, safety nets,
• Insecure access to labour markets, often
compounded by seasonality
• Vulnerability to climate change impacts
• Exposure to risk and stresses
• Low levels of self esteem and aspiration
• Absence of effective voice
• Significantly female in all the above (40%
as opposed to 10% nationally)

9. Characteristics of Extreme
Poverty
All of the above reflect different causes:
• Spatial
• Pockets
• Idiosyncratic (eg. disability, mental health,
elderly, orphaned children)
• Systemic

10. Differences Between Poor and
Extreme Poor?
1. Extent of structural disadvantage,
specifically, social remoteness to effective
intermediation
2. Severity of poverty effects
3. Accumulation of poverty effects
4. Impacts (immediate) and reproduction (over
time) of poverty effects
Translating into adverse trade-offs: time

11. Usual Assumptions for Poverty
Reduction
• Capacity of poor for counterpart action
• Access to market/labour opportunities and services
• Intergenerational transfers and sustainability
(graduation and empowerment)
• Relatively low discount rates (partly a function of
wider economic and political stability)
Many of these are unreal for the poor of
Bangladesh and even more for the extreme poor

12. Standard Strategies for Poverty
Reduction in Bangladesh
• Group Mobilisation and Individual Entrepreneurship
(GMIE)– replacing earlier subsistence improvement
approaches
• Standard Strategies are dependent on assumptions
above and
• Has led to lower prioritisation of extreme poor for
whom these assumptions are unreal; and who
experience greater vulnerability, uncertainty and
social isolation
• Excluded because ‘hard to reach’

13. Principles for Engaging with Extreme
Poor: a blended approach
• Ensuring sufficient present security to enable people
to start planning in the future through direct support
for sustainable subsistence
• Combining present survival with future provision for
children
• Supported by safety nets, insurance and social
protection to cope with vulnerability, uncertainties,
hazards and shocks

14. New Holistic Policy Mix
• Support for existing household subsistence via
acquisition of small scale productive assets
• Support to expand/strengthen fragile labour market
opportunities
• Addressing present primary health needs
• Access to safety nets (cash or food in kind), insurance
provisions supported by state entitlements, micro
finance etc.
• Conditional cash transfers to ensure quality schooling
for children

15. The Case for Social Protection
• The new policy mix still assumes some
capacity for household counterpart economic
action and supportive local environments.
• Where these conditions do not apply (spatial
concentrations, idiosyncratic or dependent
extreme poverty and some urban contexts), the
need for unconditional transfers and full social
protection is imperative.

16. Sustainability - Towards a New
Policy Settlement
• Need for a transformational and pro-poor
political settlement which embraces
prevention, protection and promotion
• Need to co-locate primary health care with
other interventions to lower discount rates
• Need to prevent inter-generational
reproduction of EP through co-location with
other interventions of education and training:
primary, secondary and apprenticeships

17. Sustainability : a pragmatic as well
as moral concern
• Social policy requires moral and pragmatic
concessions to ensure inclusive and stable
society
• Acknowledge expansion of middle classes and
their responsibilities
• Politicians have to take the lead: expanding tax
base depends on good governance, thus greater
legitimacy to tax and spend in redistributive
manner

18. Being Civilised and Pragmatic
• Social policy requires moral and
pragmatic concessions to ensure inclusive
and stable society
• Politicians have to take the lead:
expanding tax base depends on good
governance, thus greater legitimacy to tax
and spend in redistributive manner