POVERTY MAPPING AND MONITORING USING IT IS A TOOL TO COMBAT POVERTY : BANGLADESH PERSPECTIVE'

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POVERTY MAPPING AND MONITORING USING IT IS A TOOL
TO COMBAT POVERTY BANGLADESH PERSPECTIVE.
BY ABDUR RASHID SIKDER DEPUTY DIRECTOR
GENERAL BANGLADESH BUREAU OF STATISTICS
COUNTRY PAPER PRESENTED FOR THE EXPERT GROUP
MEETING ON POVERTY MAPPING AND MONITORING USING
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BANGKOK, THAILAND, 18-20
AUGUST 2003 ORGANISED BY THE UNITED NATIONS
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMISSION FOR AISA AND THE
PACIFIC (UNESCAP).
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POVERTY MAPPING AND MONITORING USING IT IS A TOOL
TO COMBAT POVERTY BANGLADESH PERSPECTIVE.
summary
Bangladesh is a country of 130 million population
with a population density 840/sq.km. Bangladesh
economy is not big enough to support such a vast
population and high incidence of poverty is the
ultimate result. Though the country is making
good progress in the socio-economic field in
increasing the literacy rate, improving
expectation of life, increasing food production
and decreasing infant mortality and total
fertility but progress of poverty reduction is
very slow. Macro-economic growth could not help
reducing poverty and income inequality. Now the
planners and policy makers suggest to target the
poor for poverty alleviation programme
implementation. Here the poverty mapping can
play vital role to give visual presentation of
intensity of poverty incidence by geographic
area. This help the planners and policy makers
easily detect the most poverty effected area and
to allocate more resource to alleviate poverty.
Information Technology can be used along with
poverty mapping for quick dissemination to the
planners and policy makers and thus, poverty
monitoring will be strengthen.
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1. Introduction and objective
Poverty has been assigned as the number one
problem for development of Bangladesh. Though
the country is making significant progress in the
socio-economic field, poverty reduction is rather
slow. This is mainly because of its high
population size of 130 million (population
census-2001) in an area of 1,41,000 sq. km. with
a population density 840 per sq. km. Every year,
about 2 million population are adding to its
population size. Countrys resources are
struggling to support such increasing population.
Bangladesh has already prepared Interim Poverty
Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP), where top
priority has been given to combat poverty with
pro-poor planning and development. But, some
times, the administrators may be careless or may
have difficulty to interpret statistical facts
and figures to identify poverty clusters for
pro-poor programme implementation. Here comes
the role of poverty mapping to offer visual
representation of poverty prone areas for the
planners and administrators. The main objective
of this paper is to focus light on how poverty
mapping can be used as a tool to identify poverty
clusters and help to reduce poverty by necessary
resource allocation. Information Technology can
play vital role for quick dissemination of
statistics and poverty maps.
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2. Role of Poverty Mapping to Combat Poverty.
Economists say, if economic growth can be
accelerated, more employment will be generated
and thus, poverty will be reduced, having been
more people employed. This macro doctrine could
not help reduce inequality and most of the poor
could not derive benefit out of it. Pro-poor
action plan of I-PRSP suggest to target the poor
identifying the poverty prone area for greater
resource allocation to reduce poverty. Poverty
related statistics and indicators are provided by
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in tabular
form. The administrators and programme
implementing agencies may have difficulty to
combine various indicators and to read spatial
distribution of poverty clusters thereof. If the
poverty related indicators are represented
through map at district and sub-district level,
poverty clusters can easily be identified and
visualized. In Bangladesh where poverty
reduction is a major concern for the policy
makers and administrators, poverty maps will
act as an important tool to identify poverty
clusters and to allocate resources for poverty
alleviation. Information Technology will be
useful aid for quick dissemination of poverty
maps to the policy makers and users.
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3. Poverty Profile of Bangladesh.
3.1 Socio-economic trend
Bangladesh has acquired impressive progress in
socio-economic fields since indepence of the
country in 1971. It has achieved significant
progress in controlling population, increasing
literacy rate and improving health situation.
The population growth rate has been reduced from
2.5 percent in the mid 1970s to 1.48 percent in
2001. The infant mortality rate (IMR) has been
reduced from 153 per thousand live births in the
mid 1970s to 51.4 per thousand live births in
2001. The life expectancy has been increased
from 47 years in the mid 1970s to 68.3 years in
2001. The literacy rate of population has been
increased from 17 percent in 1974 to 45 percent
in 2001. Some selected socio-economic indicators
of Bangladesh are given in the table below
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Table 1 Elected Socio-economic Indicators of
Bangladesh in 1974/75 and 2001.
Selected Socio-economic Indicator
Year
1974/75
2001
1. Population Health Population size
(Million) 76 130 Population growth rate
2.5 1.48 Population density
537 840 CBR (Per thousand) 41.0 17.8 CDR
(Per thousand) 17.0 4.60 TFR -
2.56 IMR (Per thousand) 153
51.40 Life expectancy at birth (year)
46.8 68.3 No. of Govt. hospitals 131
663 Population per physician 12500 4147 2. E
ducation Literacy rate 17 45 No.
of Primary School (000) 36 66 No. of
High School (000) 6 14 No. of
College (000) 1 3 3.
Agriculture Production of Rice (000
ton) 111.68 250.63 Production of wheat (000
ton) - 18.40 GDP GDP growth -
5.94 GDP growth in agriculture -
6.92
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3.2 Brief Poverty Scenario of Bangladesh
In estimating poverty, Household Expenditure
Survey (HES) of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics
(BBS) used the Direct Calorie Intake (DCI) method
until 1991-92. The main drawback of this method
is that, it measures poverty solely on the basis
of an individuals nutritional intake and does
not take into account non-food expenditure, such
as, housing, education and medi-care. Thus, the
DCI method of poverty measurement may be treated
as crude estimate of poverty. The more refined
measure of poverty, the poverty estimate by Cost
of Basic Need (CBN) method, has been used in HES
1995-96 and HIES 2000. Under this method, both
food and non-food components are considered. The
threshold calorie intake per capita per day has
been considered as 2,122 kilo calories. Poverty
estimates of HIES 2000, 1995-96 and 1991-92 are
given in the table below.
Table 2 Head Count Ratio (HCR) by residence
1991-92 to 2000.
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Poverty distribution by socio-economic variable
show real fact of life. Poverty is more among
the illiterate persons. Poverty reduces sharply
with the increase of literacy level (grade).
Poverty is more among the landless and small farm
owners. Data conform the old arbitrary believe
that the poor are land poor. Data show inverse
cor-relation with land size, i.e. poverty is more
among the small farmers and landless. The table
below show distribution of poverty by some
socio-economic variables The incidence of
poverty by socio-economic variables.
Socio-economic variables Poverty incidence
(HCR) 1995-96 2000 Literacy Illiterate
64.2 64.1 Literate 33.3 30.7 Level of
education No. education 64.5 63.8 Class
I-V 50.5 42.5 Class V-IX 37.7 37.1 SSC
13.2 15.3 Landownership Landless 58.2 67.7 lt
0.05 68.9 63.2 0.05 - 0.49 64.2 57.9 0.50
0.49 51.0 46.3 1.50 2.49 40.6 34.7 2.
50 7.49 30.9 23.9 7.50 9.3 8.0
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4. Poverty Reduction Strategy in Bangladesh.
The Government of Bangladesh has extended the
highest priority for poverty alleviation and
preparing policies and programmes to combat
poverty. Bangladesh is amongst those nations
worldwide currently preparing the Poverty
Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Bangladesh has
already prepared I-PRSP and working relentlessly
to finalize the I-PRSP by December, 2004. Under
the I-PRSP the following five broad sets of
policies have been identified as a measure of
poverty reduction
i) To accelerate and expand the scope for
pro-poor economic growth for increasing
income and employment. ii) To foster human
development of the poor for raising their
capabilities through education, health, nutrition
and social interventions. iii) To support
womens advancement and closing of gender gaps in
development. iv) To provide social safety net to
the poor against unanticipated income/consumption
shocks through targeted and other effort.
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v) To introduce participatory governance, enhance
voice of the poor and improve non-material
dimension of well being including security, power
and social inclusion by reforming the antipoverty
institutions and removing institutional hurdles
to social mobility.
The general Economic Division of Planning
Commission is working to translate these policies
into action plans to reduce poverty. The poverty
maps by various socio-economic indicators may be
useful aid to prepare such action plans.
5. Progress of Poverty Mapping and IT in BBS.
5.1 Aerial Photography
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics has taken aerial
photographs through out Bangladesh prior to the
Population Census-2001 for preparing census
Enumeration Area Maps. This will give an
opportunity to have accurate maps down to the
lowest level administrative area. This will
further facilitate to combine census indicators
with poverty indicators using State-of-the-art
technique to produce poverty maps. Bangladesh
Bureau of Statistics has a very good GIS
Laboratory having Sun Solaris Server,
Workstations, Are info software etc. All these
may be used for poverty mapping.
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5.2 Sub-district Level Indicators and Poverty
Maps.
Population Census provides socio-economic
data/indicators up to sub-district/thana level or
down to lowest identifiable administrative area
level. On the others hand, poverty indicators
derived from the Household Income and Expenditure
Survey(HIES) are at six administrative divisions
level, Now, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics is
working with World Food Programme (WFP) to
combine these indicators and to produce
sub-district level poverty indicators. These will
be analysed using state-of-the-art technique.
The following analyses will be carried out to
derive index
1) Principal Component Analysis and using factor
scores to come up with all index. 2) Standardi
zing them (z scores) giving weights and then
combining them. 3) Simple ranking of indicators
and adding up the ranks. 4) Simple below mean
(1)/above mean (0) and adding them up to form
an index. 5) Scaling indicators according to
pre-set thresholds and scaling between them and
weighting them and arriving at an
index. 6) Running a combination of PCA/cluster
analysis to contract key poor areas and
characters. All these analyses will give poverty
maps at sub-district level.
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5.3 Using IT for Poverty Mapping
Information Technology will be useful aid for
poverty mapping. Bangladesh Bureau of statistics
has intra-net through out its office. It has
Web-site for data dissemination. These
information technology may be fruitfully utilised
to disseminate poverty maps quickly to the users,
giving new dimension to poverty monitoring
system. 6. Conclusion Poverty in Bangladesh is
characterized by regional variations for various
agro-socio-economic and climatic reasons.
I-PRSP suggest to target the poor for appropriate
resource allocation to alleviate poverty.
Poverty maps will provide visual presentation of
intensity of poverty incidence by area. Thus,
the planners and policy-makers may be guided in
the right direction to allocate resources for
poverty reduction. No doubt, IT will strengthen
the poverty monitoring system.