RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

Socioeconomic Profile Findings
♦ Households are headed by women with no adult male income-earner or other
source of income.
The following findings regarding VGD participation should therefore be understood in the
context of recent WFP efforts aimed at improving the targeting and selection process.
Table 31: Household VGD Cards by Socioeconomic Class
Do you Have a VGD Card? (weighted data)
Socioeconomic Categories
Non On-the-
Vulnerable Edge Vulnerable
63
Invisible
Poor Total
N 13 76 86 44 219
% of HH with VGD card
6.0% 34.9% 39.1% 20.0%
100.0
%
% of VGD cards within HH
socio economic status
2.5% 6.3% 8.2% 8.1% 6.6%
N 414 993 858 396 2661
The study found that only seven percent (6.6 percent) of all households residing in the WFP
priority zones have VGD cards (after weighting the data) and are accessing food assistance
through the VGD programme. Because the VGD programme is so wide-ranging, covering
virtually every rural upazila in the country, VGD cards are only available to an average of
170 households in each participating union. For that reason, many households who may
meet the criteria established for participation are, by necessity, excluded from the two-year
VGD cycle. Only a little more that eight percent of invisible poor and vulnerable households
have VGD cards. However, 6.3 percent of on-the-edge households and 2.5 percent of nonvulnerable
households have also managed to possess the cards.
Analysing the data through an alternative lens, six percent of the cards lay in the hands of
non-vulnerable households and on-the-edge households possess 35 percent of the cards.
Thus approximately 60 percent of the cards have been distributed to the two bottom
vulnerable categories of households in the WFP programming regions, resulting in 41
percent inclusion error 4 . Invisible poor and vulnerable households have received 20 and 39
percent of the VGD cards respectively.
This study was not precisely designed for a robust assessment of safety net programmes like
VGD, RMP and others. However the important findings that the study has revealed is,
despite a VGD targeting strategy that purports to deliver VGD cards to the ‘ultra-poor,’ a
substantial proportion of the VGD cards have reached the non-deserving or non-poor
households- a concern that has also been complemented by few other recent studies on safety
nets. 5
WFP has recently expended substantial efforts at improving VGD targeting, implementing
distinct criteria for household inclusion in the programme and instituting a monitoring
system aimed at ensuring that only deserving households are enrolled in the programme.
4 Inclusion of non-deserving participants/beneficiaries in a programme has been termed as inclusion error.
5 A Recent (2006) study on “Relative Efficacy of Food and Cash Transfers” by IFPRI & WFP showed that 65%
of the VGD beneficiary households belong to the lowest 30% expenditure decile/groups. WFP’s 2006
monitoring findings on VGD estimated that 18% of the VGD cardholders do not qualify for the programme.