Socio-economic Baseline Survey of Chittagong Hill Tracts - chtdf

HDRCSocio-economic Baseline Survey of Chittagong Hill Tracts115Table 14.7: Household Poverty Scenario by Communities (DCI method)Poverty levelIndigenouspeoplesBawmChakChakmaKhyangKhumiLushaiMarmaMroPangkhuaTanchangyaTripuraBangaleeAll CHTNational(rural) 35Hardcore poor 39.4 64.8 63.3 33.9 59.6 48.8 66.7 40.9 30.4 26.0 35.0 42.2 31.4 35.8 17.5Absolute poor 65.1 90.7 83.7 60.1 80.9 60.5 93.3 61.2 66.7 80.0 63..3 71.9 58.7 62.2 39.5Non-poor 34.9 9.3 16.3 39.9 19.1 39.5 6.7 38.8 33.3 20.0 36.7 28.1 41.3 37.8 60.5The status of women in rural CHT in connection with the poverty is a grave concern. Almostall the women living in CHT (94%) are living below the absolute poverty line. It is to beespecially emphasized that about 85% of the women there have to live below the hardcorepoverty line. The proportion of non-poor women is extremely low across the communities.Among the Bawms, the Chakmas, the Lushais virtually there is none who are non-poor.However, in spite of high prevalence of both absolute and hardcore poverty – theTanchangya, the Marma, and the Pangkhua women are relatively better in terms of theirproportion of non-poor. About 12% of the Tanchangya, over 9% of the Marma and 8% ofPangkhua women are non-poor, while among the Bangalee community the same is onlyabout 3%.Table 14.8: Female Poverty Scenario by Communities (DCI method)Poverty levelIndigenouspeoplesBawmChakChakmaKhyangKhumiLushaiMarmaMroPangkhuaTanchangyaTripuraBangaleeAll CHTHardcore poor 79.7 94.4 91.8 76.5 89.4 79.1 100. 0 75.1 91.3 90.0 73.3 87.4 92.6 85.5Absolute poor 91.6 100.0 93.9 89.7 95.7 95.3 100.0 90.6 94.2 92.0 88.3 95.5 97.2 94.1Non-poor 8.4 6.1 00.3 4.3 4.7 9.4 5.8 8.0 11.7 4.5 2.8 5.9The discussion presented above along with the data provided in Tables 13.5 and 13.6 indicatethat severe poverty reduction measures are the utmost call of the day for CHT region as awhole. Special measures also are urgently needed to undertake for the CHT women. All theagencies: the governmental and non-governmental (including development partners) need toundertake well concerted and multi-sectoral measures for poverty reduction in CHT keepingin mind that availability and access to food for most of the rural people in the region is low.Cost of Basic Need Method: In order to estimate the poverty incidences using CBN method,the household expenditure on basic need items were considered including food, clothing,housing, medicine (health care expenses), and education. The upper and lower poverty linesfor estimating the incidences of poverty have been estimated Tk. 1,025 and Tk. 866respectively 36 . Overall slight less than three-fourth of the households (74%) live below thelower poverty line and 86 % live below upper poverty line. The corresponding estimates ofthe national (rural) average are 29% and 44% respectively. Households living below lowerand upper poverty lines are 78% and 89% respectively among indigenous people and 69%35 BBS 2007a36 The survey was conducted during January-February 2008. Household Income Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2005 providesthe CBN upper and lower poverty lines for selected areas of Bangladesh. We have taken the CBN upper and lowerpoverty lines of rural Chittagong as the proxy for the survey districts –Rangamati, Khagrachari, and Bandarban. Thus theestimated upper and lower poverty lines for the survey areas in 2005 would be Tk. 891 and Tk. 753 respectively.Considering 15 percent inflation rate between 2005 and 2007, the estimated upper and lower poverty lines for 2008 areTk. 1,025 and Tk. 866 respectively.