RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

Socioeconomic Profiles of WFP Operational Areas and Beneficiaries
Asset ownership is meagre. Most vulnerable households (72 percent) do not have any cattle.
Those with cattle typically own one to two cattle heads. One-third of households have no
poultry and another 23 percent have one to three poultry. Less than 15 percent of the
households own a bicycle.
More than half (57 percent) of the households depend on physical labour to make a living,
Households involved in agricultural production also sell manual labour as a secondary
income strategy to complement primary income. Sharecropping is an important livelihood
strategy employed by 41 percent of vulnerable households, only 18 percent of whom
cultivate on their own land. Only approximately 15 percent of households have access to
Khash land.
Average per-capita monthly expenditure of these households is not more than 775 taka.
Almost every other household (45 percent) has an outstanding loan. One in three households
is a Grameen or NGO member, 68 percent of their total borrowing is generally from these
organizations. Borrowing from moneylenders is therefore less common (seven percent). A
majority of vulnerable households lack social capital. About 40 percent of households are
members of an organization. Approximately one-third of households do not participate in
community festivals.
Most vulnerable households appear to be more food secure than are the invisible poor.
However, nine percent of households are chronically food insecure throughout the year and
more than half of the households have access to adequate food for only seven to nine
months. More than 80 percent of households (81 percent) eat three meals a day but tend to
consume poor quality diets (69 percent consume two to eight items). The CSI score for this
category of households is 21.
1.2.5 Households On-the-Edge
A third category of households, representing 37 percent of the sample, tend to be food secure
throughout the year with better diets, agricultural lands, livestock, and memberships in
organizations. These ‘On-the-Edge’ households are not currently vulnerable but a shock to
the household could negatively affect their social mobility. About a quarter of the
households describe themselves as having escaped poverty during the past 10 years.
Eighteen percent of all female-headed households are on-the-edge. Their age dependency
ratio is 66. More than a half (52 percent) of household heads can read and write. Fifty-two
percent of the households have agricultural land with a mean area of one acre and more than
90 percent have homestead land. More than three quarters of on-the-edge household farm
their own land. About a quarter combine sharecropping to increase their cultivation.
Approximately 14 percent of the households have access to Khash land 1 . Nearly half of the
households have cattle and over three-quarters have poultry. A quarter of the households
have at least one bicycle.
1 Khas lands are huge areas of land, originally belonging to big estates or large chunks of land acquired by the
government for railways or other big land-based projects and abandoned properties, later vested in government.
These khas lands are managed directly by the government through government appointed-managers or trustees
(http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/L_0047.htm).
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