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The Problem of Poverty in Bangladesh |
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Globalist Bookshelf > Global Society
The Problem of Poverty in Bangladesh
By
Muhammad Yunus | Monday, February 25, 2008
Ever since its founding, Bangladesh has been known as one of the world's
poorest countries. There has been an ongoing battle against challenging
living conditions overcrowding, floods, deforestation, erosion, soil
depletion and natural calamities. As Grameen Bank founder and Noble Prize
winner Muhammad Yunus argues, solutions are available provided we are
willing to entertain fresh thinking about poverty and its
remedies.
don't think we can blame fate, nature or God for our troubles. The real
problem in Bangladesh is not the natural disasters. It is the widespread
poverty, which is a man-made phenomenon.
Taking steps toward safety
Cyclones, floods and tidal surges occur in other countries. In most,
they do not cause human misery of the magnitude we see in Bangladesh.
The reason is that, in these countries, the people are rich enough to
build protective systems and strong embankments. Rivers in Canada,
England and France have tidal surges similar to those in Bangladesh, but
dredging and causeway construction have minimized their effects and the
threat to human life.
Furthermore, poverty and over-crowding have pushed the countless poor in
Bangladesh to seek their livelihoods in more and more unsafe areas of the
country, though they lack the capacity to organize even minimal safety
measures for themselves.
A threat to world peace
Thus, poverty doesn't only condemn humans to lives of difficulty and
There is a need to find fresh, positive approaches to development that
emphasize the potential strengths of a country and its people, not just
their problems.
unhappiness it can expose them to life-threatening dangers. Because
poverty denies people any semblance of control over their destiny, it is
the ultimate denial of human rights. When freedom of speech or religion
is violated in this country or that, global protests are often mobilized
in response.
Yet when poverty violates the human rights of half the world's
population, most of us turn our heads away and get on with our lives.
For the same reason, poverty is perhaps the most serious threat to world
peace, even more dangerous than terrorism, religious fundamentalism,
ethnic hatred, political rivalries or any of the other forces that are
often cited as promoting violence and war.
Loss of hope
Poverty leads to hopelessness, which provokes people to desperate
acts. Those with practically nothing have no good reason to
As these numbers suggest, the problems of poverty in Bangladesh are
far from being solved.
refrain from violence, since even acts with only a small chance of
improving their conditions seem better than doing nothing and accepting
their fate with passivity.
Poverty also creates economic refugees, leading to clashes between
populations. It leads to bitter conflicts between peoples, clans and
nations over scarce resources water, arable land, energy supplies and
any saleable commodity.
Prosperous nations that trade with one another and devote their energies
to economic growth rarely go to war with one another nations whose
people are brutalized by poverty find it easy to resort to war.
By lifting people out of poverty, micro-credit is a long-term force for
peace. And Bangladesh is a vivid example of what it can do.
Bangladesh today is a living laboratory one of the world's poorest
countries that is gradually being transformed by innovative social and
business thinking. Over the past two decades, conditions among the poor
people of Bangladesh have steadily improved. Statistics tell part of the
story.
Signs of improvement
The poverty rate (as measured by international aid organizations such
as the World Bank) has fallen from an estimated 74% in 1973-74 to 57% in
1991-92, to 49% in 2000 and then to 40% in 2005.
Though still too high, it continues to fall by around 1% a year, with
each percentage point representing a meaningful improvement in the lives
of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis. The country is on track to
achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty by half by
2015.
Even more remarkably, Bangladesh's rapid economic growth has been
accompanied by little increase in inequality. The commonly used Gini
index of inequality has changed only from 0.30 in 1995 to 0.31 in 2005.
It's also noteworthy that, since 2000, the real per-capita income of the
bottom 10% of the population has grown at the same annual rate as that of
the top 10% (2.8%).
Tangible growth
The sharp drop in poverty is reflected in changes in economic growth,
employment patterns and the structure of the
Poverty and over-crowding have pushed the countless poor in Bangladesh
to seek their livelihoods in more and more unsafe areas of the
country.
economy. Growth of the Bangladeshi economy at $71 billion, the third
largest in South Asia, after India and Pakistan has averaged 5.5% since
2000 and reached 6.7% in 2006, compared with just 4% in the 1980s. In
addition, per-capita growth has increased from 1% in the 1980s to 3.5%
currently.
Reliance on subsistence agriculture is gradually declining. In 2005,
non-farm labor surpassed agriculture as the main source of income in
rural areas, and fully 50% of the nation's GDP is now derived from the
services sector.
Population growth a major problem in Bangladesh, one of the most
densely populated countries on earth has fallen sharply, from an annual
average of 3% in the 1970s to 1.5% in 2000. This is close to India's 1.4%
but much lower than Pakistan's 2.5%.
Quality of life
This slowdown means that more families have the resources to care for
their children and provide them with decent opportunities for education.
It also means the liberation of millions of women from an endless cycle
of child-bearing and child rearing, giving them the chance to help their
families improve their standard of living through productive work.
Controlling population
The decline in population growth has been driven, in large
By lifting people out of poverty, micro-credit is a long-term force
for peace. And Bangladesh is a vivid example of what it can do.
part, by improvements in health care. When more children survive, parents
feel more confident about using birth control they no longer believe
they need to bear five or six children in hopes of raising two. During
the 1990s, the percentage of Bangladeshi mothers receiving prenatal
health care doubled.
Partly as a result, infant mortality rates in Bangladesh fell by more
than half (from 100 to 41 per 1,000 children) between 1990 and 2006. In
addition, the mortality rate for children under five is 52 per 1,000 in
Bangladesh compared with 87 in India and 98 in Pakistan.
Healthcare and life expectancy
In 2005, the percentage of one-year-old children among the poorest
20% of households who had been fully immunized stood at 50% in
Bangladesh, compared with 21% in India and 23% in Pakistan.
Around 81% of children had been vaccinated against measles, compared with
58% in India. And while child malnutrition remains a serious problem, the
percentage of children whose growth is stunted has declined from almost
70% in 1985-86 to 43% in 2004.
Educational opportunities
Statistics for life expectancy at birth, which were static at around
56 years through the early 1990s, have begun to
Poverty is perhaps the most serious threat to world peace even more
dangerous than terrorism, religious fundamentalism, ethnic hatred or
political rivalries.
climb. By 2006, life expectancy was estimated at 65 years, and the
unusual situation in which women's life expectancy was lower than men's
has finally been reversed, with women now at 65 years and men at 64
years.
Educational opportunities for children have also improved. The percentage
of children completing the fifth grade has increased from 49% in 1990 to
74% in 2004. National literacy rates have increased from only 26% in 1981
to 34% in 1990 and 41% in 2002. The 1990s witnessed a tripling in the
number of children attending secondary school.
More girls now attend secondary schools than boys, a feat unmatched in
South Asia and a remarkable achievement given the fact that, in the
Bangladesh of the early 1990s, there were three times as many boys as
girls in secondary schools.
Health and sanitation
The quality of shelter and access to basic sanitation and
telecommunication services have all improved significantly in recent
years. In 2000, 18% of households lived under straw roofs. By 2005, the
percentage had fallen to 7%.
A sanitation campaign has resulted in increased access to safe latrines
from 54% in 2000 to 71% in 2005. The mobile-phone revolution has boosted
the fraction of the population with access to telephone services from 2%
in 2000 to 14% currently.
Guarding against disaster
Bangladesh's capacity to withstand natural disaster
Because poverty denies people any semblance of control over their
destiny, it is the ultimate denial of human rights.
shocks has improved significantly. Following the massive floods of 1998,
per-capita GDP fell sharply, but a flood of similar scale in 2004 had a
negligible impact on growth.
This resilience is attributable to a more diversified economy and
improved emergency response capabilities, including early warning systems
and cyclone shelters, throughout the country.
Between 1980 and 2004, the Human Development Index (a widely used
measurement of key standard-of-living indicators for developing nations)
increased by 45% in Bangladesh compared to 39% in India and 16% in Sri
Lanka. This is despite the fact that, as of 2004, per-capita GDP in India
was 68% higher than in Bangladesh, and in Sri Lanka over 200% higher.
Global applications
As these numbers suggest, the problems of poverty in Bangladesh,
though improved, are far from being solved. Bangladesh
Poverty creates economic refugees, leading to clashes between
populations. It leads to bitter conflicts over resources water, arable
land, energy, or supplies.
is still one of the poorest countries in the world, with tens of millions
of people living at a level barely above subsistence. But the social and
economic trends are moving in the right direction.
The challenges and opportunities facing Bangladesh illustrate some
important themes that many of the world's developing countries share:
1. The need to think strategically about development, analyzing a
country's potential role in its region and the world in search of
opportunities for growth,
2. The need to get past myths, stereotypes, and assumptions about poor
countries and their relations to their neighbors,
3. The need to find fresh, positive approaches to development that
emphasize the potential strengths of a country and its people, not just
their problems,
4. The need to think about how social business can address social and
economic problems that are usually left to be resolved by governments.
These ideas offer hope for alleviating the worst effects of poverty both
in Bangladesh and in many other poor countries around the world.
Editor's Note: This feature is adapted from CREATING A WORLD WITHOUT
POVERTY by Muhammad Yunus. Copyright 2007 Public Affairs. Reprinted with
permission of the publishe
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