RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

Socioeconomic Profile Findings
Variations are significant when the data is disaggregated by socioeconomic class. More than
a quarter of the non-vulnerable households use wood as the primary source of cooking fuel
whereas more than 90 percent of the invisible poor use straw, plant residuals, rice chaff or
plant twigs.
2.6 ASSETS
The household asset base is an important component of physical capital and serves as a key
indicator in profiling livelihoods. This study found asset ownership to be highly correlated
with income and food security indicators. An asset ownership variable was used as one of
the key variables in creating socioeconomic groups. The study examined a number of
different categories of assets, including livestock, household appliances, land, transportation,
as well as other productive and non-productive assets.
Figure 13 and Table 20 present the value of assets owned by survey households. As
expected, the number and value of assets owned by the households are functions of their
socioeconomic status. The value of non-vulnerable household assets is approximately 95
times more than that of the invisible poor (8,676,000 Taka compared to 91,000 Taka). Nonvulnerable
households own more than 270 decimals of functional land for cultivation, while
the mean area of land owned by the invisible poor is only 34 decimals. Similarly, nonvulnerable
households own an average of five livestock while the invisible poor on average
own only two. In addition to land and livestock, non-vulnerable households also own
significantly greater numbers and value of other productive assets (mean value 74 thousand
Taka, compared to two thousand Taka worth of other productive assets owned by invisible
poor households).
Figure 13: Total Value of Household Assets
% of Households
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
Total Value of Assets (in '000 Bangladeshi Taka)
Non Vulnerable On-the-edge Vulnerable Invisible Poor
Household Socioeconomic Class
The value of assets owned by female-headed households is approximately two-thirds the
value of assets owned by male-headed households (1,486,000 Taka vs. 2,210,000 Taka).
Female-headed households also own smaller areas of land, fewer numbers of livestock and
fewer numbers of other productive and unproductive assets compared to male-headed
households. As measured by land access and ownership of productive assets, female-headed
households across the six zones are amongst the most vulnerable households in rural
Bangladesh.
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