RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

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Socioeconomic Profile Findings Use of loans varies significantly by region. CHT households tend to invest most of their loans (72 percent) in business inputs, which include agriculture, poultry and livestock, land purchase or lease, raw materials, or small enterprise inputs. Haor zone households primarily use loans to meet consumption needs (64 percent). Households using loans to repay previous loans ranged from a high of 11 percent in Char and Haor regions to a low of seven percent in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. It is clear that despite the positive trends in microfinance and IGA opportunities in rural Bangladesh in recent years, the poorest and most vulnerable households, particularly those in the Char, Haor, and Northwest regions of the country, continue to be plagued by a debt burden that can erode livelihoods. Community groups have described frequent patterns of a downward debt spiral involving loan taking for emergency purposes or for social obligations, such as dowry or marriage. Poor households are usually unable to repay or invest loans in productive activities that may not yield a return anyway. In the latter instance, poor households have described contracting loans for agricultural production inputs only to lose the harvest to flood, drought, or pest infestation. The consequent debt results in a series of cross-borrowings that lead to excessive debt levels. When debt burden increases beyond the capacity of the debt management strategies described above, households are forced to take decisions that have more severe impacts on livelihood systems. The infelicitous combination of high risk and vulnerability, labour seasonality, low incomes, and abundant credit availability favours the debt spiral, especially whenever households are forced to divest assets in order to repay debts. Indebtedness has become a routine livelihood strategy of poor households, not only as productive capital but also to cope with a highly uncertain and risk-laden environment. Such credit becomes for poor families a buffer that provides food, health care, and a means of meeting social obligations. Heavily indebted households face risk to their livelihood security. Indebted households frequently curtail consumption, health care, or other livelihood needs in order to repay loans, thereby affecting food and livelihood security. In the worse cases, extreme poor households have been forced to sell assets, including land, thereby permanent degrading household livelihoods, in order to repay loans. From a livelihood perspective, multiple and cross borrowing engenders great risk for many of the poorest households. 4 SOCIAL & POLITICAL CAPITAL Stock of social capital that households can use depends on the strength of the network or connections they build. Access to social capital enables households to secure resources and opportunities. 4.1 MEMBERSHIP IN ORGANISATIONS To understand the dynamics of social capital in the context of rural Bangladesh, this study inquired about household memberships in the Union Parishad, various committees such as school, market and mosque groups, Grameen Bank groups, NGO and CBO groups, village court, government welfare recipient groups including VGD, RMP and old age pensions, professional associations, village-based governmental organizations such as BRDB and BADC, and other types of organisations that work with the communities. Household memberships in the organizations mentioned above are generally low. More than half of all households (54 percent) have not pursued membership in any of the organizations 57
Socioeconomic Profiles of WFP Operational Areas and Beneficiaries mentioned above. Only 10 percent of the all households have retained membership status in more than one organisation. Not surprisingly, the proportion of vulnerable and invisible poor households with memberships in any organization is substantially lower than the proportion of non-vulnerable households (34 percent of invisible poor households have memberships compared to 65 percent of non-vulnerable households). One-quarter of the non-vulnerable households belong to two or more organizations. The large Chi Square value (202155.834) suggests that organizational membership is strongly correlated to household socioeconomic status. Political and social capital is strongly linked to socioeconomic wellbeing in rural Bangladesh. Table 30: Membership in Organizations by Socioeconomic Status % within HH socio economic status No membership Membership in one organization Membership in two organizations Membership in three and more organizations N Membership in organizations HH socio economic status Non Most Vulnerable 2 3 vulnerable Total 35.3% 51.0% 60.2% 65.9% 53.9% 40.0% 38.2% 32.5% 28.9% 35.2% 17.6% 8.1% 6.1% 4.2% 8.3% 7.1% 2.7% 1.2% 1.0% 2.6% 414 993 858 396 2661 A larger proportion of male-headed households (46 percent) have memberships in organisations compared to female-headed households (33 percent). Regional variation in organisational membership is minimal. Figure 17: Membership in Organizations by Socioeconomic Status % of households 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Union Parishad Different committees Memebership in Organizations Grameen Bank NGOs/ CBOs 58 Village court Govt. welfare recepient groups Professional organizations Non vulnerable 2 3 Most vulnerable As figure 17 indicates, nearly one-fourth of the study households pursue memberships in NGOs and CBOs. Many if not most of the NGO memberships relate to micro-enterprise activities (as discussed in the section above). Few households elicit any interest in joining government organizations (less than one percent), professional organisations (less than two percent), or Union Parishads (also less than two percent). Fewer than 20 percent of the Govt. organizations Other associations
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This socioeconomic
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Bibliography 97-99 TABLES & FIGURES
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Table 51 Dietary Diversity by House
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PRA Participatory Rural Appraisal P
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♦ ♦ ♦ Household survey of 2,7
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households, who farmed on seven tim
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Water & Sanitation: Up to 97% of ru
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RECOMMENDATIONS The following recom
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Socio-Economic Profiles of WFP Oper
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Methodology II METHODOLOGY The asse
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Methodology A list of the qualitati
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