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Last month, the General Economic Division (GED) of the Bangladesh Planning Commission published and presented a report on the national multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI) of Bangladesh. This is the first national report on the issue. The report came up with three overall conclusions which are of importance.
One, out of every four people in Bangladesh, one lives in multi-dimensional poverty.
Two, the multi-dimensional poverty rate in Bangladesh is higher than that of the country’s income poverty rate.
Three, in our country, there are group and regional disparities in multi-dimensional deprivations.
Traditionally, poverty is looked at through the lens of income — in analytical discussions as well in measurements. But today, poverty is not considered as a linear or a unidimensional phenomenon. Deprivation may exist in non-income dimensions as well — for example, in education, health services, nutrition, access to safe drinking water, or in employment. Income deficits do not always reflect impoverishment in these areas.
For example, a person may be rich, but if he or she is illiterate, he or she is not income poor but he or she is definitely deprived in terms of educational attainment.
But which human deprivation is the worst cannot be identified through absolute objective yardsticks. The issue is subjective and relative. Different deprivation gets different priorities in the minds of different people.
We must remember that human development does not only depend on physical well-being, it is also dependent on people’s voice and autonomy, their right of participation, the environmental balance, and so on.
A person, even after achieving physical well-being, may not exercise his or her voice or autonomy. Similarly, if a rich, well-educated person is not allowed either in certain social premises or in specific social functions, just because of his or her skin colour, he or she is also deprived.
Therefore, in the ultimate analysis, human poverty is not unidimensional, it is rather multi-dimensional.
In order to measure multi-dimensional poverty around the world, in 2010, the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) of Oxford University collaborated to construct a multi-dimensional poverty index.
With 11 indicators (for example, nutrition, school attendance, access to safe drinking water, electricity etc) in three basic human development dimensions as health, knowledge and standard of living, a composite index has been developed. Five observations may be pertinent to this index.
First, the MPI is not a linear measure of poverty. As it includes other dimensions of impoverishment, it is multi-dimensional.
Second, since income is not included in the MPI, the measure basically concentrates on non-income dimensions of deprivation. Thus, in order to understand the incidence of income deprivation, a relevant income poverty measure is needed.
Third, the multi-dimensional poverty index focuses on the physical well-being of a person, and hence does not include such human development dimensions as people’s right to voice and autonomy, the right of participation, and the environmental balance. This is a significant limitation of the MPI.
Fourth, the MPI is not a perfect poverty measure. Its drawbacks have been discussed in various academic research.
Fifth, there needs to be more work and research on this index to revise and refine it.
Every year, OPHI constructs the MPI for more than 100 countries and publishes them in a global annual report. The HDRO reproduces them in its global annual Human Development Report (HDR). The topic of this year’s OPHI global MPI report, which was published a few months ago, is conflict and multi-dimensional poverty.
The report concluded that globally, there are 1.1 billion people (around 17% of the global population, who live in multi-dimensional poverty. Out of these 1.1 billion people, 960 million (84%) are in rural areas.
On the other hand, about half (540 million) of those who suffer from multi-dimensional impoverishment are children and young people. Thus, global multi-dimensional poverty has a rural and a young face.
In the context of Bangladesh
The results of the Bangladesh Planning Commission report on the MPI in the country reveals that in 2019, the incidence of multi-dimensional poverty in Bangladesh was 24% — about 40 million people in the country lived in multi-dimensional poverty in 2019. In the context of these numbers, five observations are significant.
First, the number of people living in multi-dimensional poverty in Bangladesh went down – from 65 million in 2013 to 40 million in 2019.
Second, the multi-dimensional poverty rate (24%) in the country was higher than that of income poverty (19%). It implies that not all deprivation in Bangladesh can be explained by income deficits.
Third, the rural multi-dimensional poverty rate at 27% is more than double than that of urban multi-dimensional poverty at 13%.
Fourth, the multi-dimensional poverty rate (29%) among those below 18 years is higher than that of the rate (21%) among adults.
Fifth, regionally speaking, the highest incidence of multi-dimensional poverty at 38% is in Sylhet Division.
Sixth, the incidence of multi-dimensional poverty at 40% is severe in such districts as Bandarban, Bhola, Cox’s bazar, Rangamati, and Sunamganj.
Finally, even though not strictly comparable, and the global and regional numbers are indicative, yet the multi-dimensional poverty rate in Bangladesh at 24% seems to be higher than the global rate at 17% or that of South Asia at 21%.
In Bangladesh, the deprivation which contributed the most to the country’s multi-dimensional poverty includes school attendance, years of schooling, housing, sanitation, nutrition etc. In terms of housing, about 21% of the people of the country do not have improved floors, roofs, or walls and are counted as multi-dimensionally poor due to inadequate shelter. Similarly, in each of the dimensions of sanitation, internet access, more than 20% are poor by MPI standard. These numbers indicate high levels of deprivation nationwide.
What needs to be done to reduce multi-dimensional poverty in Bangladesh?
- Policies and strategies must shift away from exclusively on income poverty to non-income derivation also. Therefore, rather than pursuing pure growth-driven policies and strategies, measures must attend to enhancing basic social services.
- The deprivation in housing, education, nutrition, which contribute the most to multi-dimensional poverty in Bangladesh, must be prioritized in terms of policies and resource allocations. The emphasis should be on education and standard of living.
- For the population groups (children and young people) as well the regions (such as Sylhet Division), where the incidence of multi-dimensional poverty is severe, specific and targeted policy measures must be undertaken.
- The data collection on multi-dimensional poverty has to be strengthened. If more robust and reliable data are collected, they will contribute to better policy-making and for monitoring multi-dimensional poverty in the country. The importance of more and better data cannot be overemphasized for understanding the phenomenon of multi-dimensional poverty and for evaluating the results of targeted policy interventions.
- A proper, robust and credible evaluation framework needs to be developed so that from time-to-time, objective monitoring and evaluations of poverty reducing strategies and allocated resources can be done. In Bangladesh, there is no alternative to coordinated approaches for reducing multi-dimensional poverty.
Dr Selim Jahan is the Former Director, Human Development Report Office and Poverty Division, United Nations Development Program, New York, USA.
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