RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

Livelihoods in Rural Bangladesh: A Secondary Review of the Socio-Economic Context
such as Helen Keller International, which promote homestead production of nutrient-rice
foods (Gill, 2003).
3.6 Livelihood Strategies
Rural livelihood strategies have shifted markedly in recent years. As TANGO International
has identified in several recent studies, salient changes include:
1) The transition from away from agriculture into off-farm activities. Sen’s 2003 panel
study demonstrates a general shift in income generating strategies in Bangladesh.
Agriculture has declined as the primary source of household income from 69% in
1987 to 51% in 2003. Although agriculture remains of paramount importance to
most rural households throughout the country, this data suggests a decline in the
number of employment opportunities in the agricultural sector (Saha, 2003). A gap
between industrial and agricultural wages has emerged; industry pays wages of 1.7
times higher than does agriculture, encouraging off-farm employment and urban
migration (Jones, 2004.) The greatest expansion in the non-agricultural sector has
been in the services sector, which includes small shops, rickshaws, small-scale
construction, carpentry, and petty trade. In order to access these new types of
livelihoods, individuals are obliged to draw on additional types of assets – human,
social, and financial – in addition to natural assets, which are at the centre of
agricultural livelihood strategies (Toufique & Turton, 2003). Poorer community
members often lack the human capital required to take advantage of new livelihood
opportunities and technologies that have expanded employment in rural areas,
leaving poor households even more economically disadvantaged as other community
members begin to monopolize employment opportunities or community
infrastructure (Toufique and Turton 2003; Mandal 2003).
2) Diversification within the Agricultural Sector. Even as the subsistence and cash crop
production in Bangladesh economy is declining relative to other sectors or livelihood
strategies, agricultural production continues to provide households with a most
essential livelihood activity. Within the agriculture sector, farm households are
allocating more land to high value rice crops (as well as other crops) and increasing
cultivation of HYVs in areas devoted to rice paddy production (Sen 2003, Jones,
2004). Production of livestock, poultry and small ruminants is increasing as well.
However, this strategy of diversification is predominant among relatively better-off
households.
3) Increased reliance on credit. Borrowing money for a variety of reasons has become a
significant household livelihood strategy. However, this spiralling credit dependency
has created a “downward debt spiral.” Many poor rural households struggle to meet
family consumption needs for a short period of time after which they are forced to
seek loans to obtain food and agricultural inputs. Poor households employ a number
of strategies to cope with the economic stress of loan repayment, including curtailing
daily food consumption by reducing the number of meals or eliminating protein
components from the diet. Other strategies include reallocation of household labour
to include women and children, the advance sale of crops and labour, the sale of
productive assets, and more cross-borrowing in order to meet interest and principal
repayments on other loans. Many households are simultaneously in debt to three or
four different sources.
4) Increase in Migration and Remittances. The patterns of migration vary from a daily
commute to extended absences in a given season or absence from home for several
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