RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

one-quarter of the invisible poor consume three meals; most of the poorest households
regularly eat two meals a day.
Diet diversity, a proxy for nutritional adequacy and an essential aspect of food security, is
clearly problematic for the poorest households in the WFP programming zones and should
constitute a targeting indicator for food security programming. Two-thirds of invisible poor
households consume seven or fewer items in the diet. In contrast, all non-vulnerable
households consume more than nine items in the diet. Diet diversity appears to be
problematic in the Coastal and Char zones and for female-headed households, half of which
consume seven or fewer items daily. Food security, as measured by the number of months
of adequate food, yields a similar pattern. More than nine of every ten non-vulnerable
household have adequate food for at least ten months. In contrast more than half of the
invisible poor never have adequate food throughout the year. The Char and Northwest
zones appear to be the most food insecure regions of the country.
The Coping Strategies Index: Households in rural Bangladesh employ a variety of
strategies to cope with shocks, including economic, political and socio-cultural shocks as
well as natural disasters such as flooding and cyclones. Not surprisingly, the poorest
households tend to employ adaptive coping strategies far more frequently than do nonvulnerable
households. A Coping Strategies Index (CSI) tool was used to capture these
dynamics. Households experiencing food supply shortfalls were asked a series of questions
regarding coping. Information on the frequency and severity of coping is recorded, and
forms the basis for a CSI score. The CSI scores confirmed that relative to the other groups,
the invisible poor and female-headed households feel compelled to resort to more severe
coping strategies when managing food supply shortfalls:
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Non-vulnerable HH: 12
On-the-edge HH: 21
Vulnerable HH: 21
Invisible Poor HH: 33
Male-headed HH: 23
Female-headed HH: 36
All Households: 24
Most households employ a few common coping strategies during difficult periods of time of
the year, or in response to a shock or abnormal event. The most commonly employed coping
strategies include:
Limiting portions at meal time;
Relying on cheaper & less preferred foods;
Borrowing food;
Purchasing food on credit; and
Reducing adult consumption to allow children to have adequate food.
The CSI correlates closely with three measures of food security – dietary diversity, number
of meals eaten in 24 hours, and access to adequate food. This result suggests that the CSI
can be used as a proxy indicator to measure food insecurity in the WFP priority areas.
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