Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2010 – Implications for Extreme Poverty Research

1. Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2010 – Implications for Extreme Poverty Research

2. The findings of the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2010 will provide the key (but not the only) benchmark or reference point for poverty related research until 2016. • A few headlines from the preliminary report (see BBS website)

3. Steeply Declining incidence of poverty between 2005 and 2010 • Upper Poverty Line – from 40% to 31.5% national rate • Lower Poverty Line – from 25.1% to 17.6% national rate

4. Increasing food intakes • 5.5% increase from 2005 nationally • 6.21% increase rural • 3.5% increase urban • Decline in rice(439.4g to 416.10g) • Increase in wheat (12.08 to 26.09) and potato • Increase in meat, veg – and protein

5. Slight decline in inequality of income distribution • Gini co-eficient decreased slightly (0.458 from 0.467) • But share of income of bottom 50% of the population remained at 20.33% • Bottom decile gets 2% of income

6. Important contribution from remittances • Remittance receiving households have 82% higher income. Only 13.1% of remittance receiving households are below the, upper, poverty line (17% in 2005).

7. Average size of households continues to decline • From 4.84 (2005) to 4.5(2010) • Rural from 4.88 (2005) to 4.53 • Urban from 4.72 (2005) to 4.41

8. Access to education increasing • Literacy rate up to 57.9% from 51.9% (2005) • Enrolment rate for girls exceeds boys in rural and urban areas.

9. Access to Safety Nets increasing • 24.57% reported receiving benefit within the last 12 months (only 13.3% in 2005) • “The findings further affirm that SSNPs are reasonably well targetted” • Poverty incidence of SSN beneficiaries is 43.4% (compared to 27.5% overall) • But some big regional variations in % of HH receiving benefits Khulna 37.30% of HH – Rajshahi 20.66%

10. Other important findings • Microfinance • Regional distribution • Community characteristics (Mouza level) • Migration • Crisis incidence and coping • Disability Incidence • Poverty by occupation • Poverty by land-holding and others

11. The 2010 HIES report is generally good news • Sharply declining poverty • Improvements across other indicators • Progress towards MDGs • But, depending on population data, over 25 million people still below the lower poverty line.

12. The HIES represents a “State of Poverty in Bangladesh” report • Shiree is planning to produce a “State of Extreme Poverty in Bangladesh” report.

13. Group Exercise : just a 15 minute brainstorm For a State of Extreme Poverty in Bangladesh Report- start to draft a contents page What are the most critical things that must be included and why? Does the research data already exist to allow these sections to be written – if so where?

14. State of Extreme Poverty ReportDraft Contents Page Section One . Extreme Poverty in Bangladesh: Characteristics, Trends and Dynamics 1.1 What do we mean by extreme poverty? 1.2 Poverty thresholds analysis 1.3 Spatial Dimensions of Extreme Poverty Section Two. Extreme Poverty; Findings and Case Studies 2.1 Characteristics of 70,000 Extreme poor Households, shiree baseline analysis (CMS1 analysis) 2.2 Ascents and descents (analysis of CMS5 data) 2.3 Extreme Poverty and Nutrition – the relationship 2.4 “Protecting the gains”: summary analysis of Rd 1 research papers Section Three. Working with programmes 3.1 Targeting the extreme poor 3.2 Lessons from programme interventions