RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

Socioeconomic Profiles of WFP Operational Areas and Beneficiaries
Approximately six percent of currently married women aged between 15 and 49 were
pregnant at the time of the survey and another eight percent had given birth to a child during
the past one year. A significantly larger proportion (16 percent) of currently married women
in the reference age group had given birth in the Chittagong Hill Tracts compared to all other
study regions. Not all pregnant women in the study population were regularly visiting a
health facility. Only about 62 percent of the pregnant women paid a visit to the health clinic,
a statistic that varies significantly across the WFP priority regions. Fewer than half of the
women living in the Char, Coastal, or CHT zones had regularly visited health facilities
during their pregnancy.
Women instead continue to rely on Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA) to deliver babies and
provide support. Villages are served by anywhere from one to seven TBAs, of whom no
more than one or two have been trained. TBAs in most communities are not trained. Most
women are aware of the importance of extra care and extra food during pregnancies but
many are not able to partake of proper ante- or post-natal care due to poverty or customary
restrictions. Women in some communities continue to believe that consumption of less food
during pregnancy is an optimal strategy for delivering smaller babies. Women usually
exclusively breast-feed for six months, then begin introducing weaning foods, including
cereals, rice, shuji, pulses, boiled eggs and some vegetables, until their children are two or
three years old.
Birth control devices are widely available and widely used. Knowledge of HIV/AIDS is
rudimentary at best. Many community residents have heard about HIV/AIDS over the radio
or television, but do not yet consider it a threat or risk to their communities.
2 PHYSICAL CAPITAL
2.1 HOUSING
Figure 9 indicates, almost 90 percent of the households surveyed own the dwelling that they
are currently occupying. Approximately seven percent of households were either living in
someone else’s house for free or squatting, while approximately four percent of households
partially own the dwelling in which they currently live. Renting a house in rural
Bangladesh, in contrast to urban Bangladesh, is extremely rare.
Dwelling ownership varies by household socioeconomic status. More than 95 percent of
non-vulnerable households own their dwelling while three-quarters of the invisible poor
households own their homes and another 20 percent either live for free in houses owned by
others or are squatting. More than 90 percent of male-headed households own the current
dwelling. By comparison, approximately 75 percent of female-headed households currently
own the dwelling in which they live. A significantly larger proportion of female-headed
households neither own nor rent their dwelling compared to male-headed households (18
percent compared to 6.5 percent, respectively), but instead live on someone else’s’ land for
free or are squatting.
40