One in every four persons in the country is poor and approximately 3 crore 98 lakh individuals are suffering multidimensional poverty, according to the Multidimensional Poverty Index released on Thursday in the capital.
The National MPI score for Bangladesh is 0.106, meaning that poor people go through 10.6 per cent of all possible deprivations, according to the MPI score.
The value of MPI ranges between 0 and 1, where 1 indicates that the entire population is poor and deprived of all needs under the poverty index.
The top contributors to multidimensional poverty have been identified as deprivations in child school attendance, years of schooling, nutrition, housing, internet access, sanitation, and assets.
Some 20 per cent or more than 30 million of the population in Bangladesh are multi-dimensionally poor and deprived of housing, internet access, and sanitation, according to the first-ever MPI, prepared by the General Economics Division on data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey.
Mustafa K Mujeri, Executive Director of the Institute for Inclusive Finance and Development said that the Human Development Report Office, a wing of the United Nations Development Programme, and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative had been producing and publishing the MPI on Bangladesh jointly since the 1990s.
Welcoming the GED efforts, Mujeri said that the recommendations of the National MPI should be implemented for meaningful exercises. 聽聽聽聽聽
The MPI was disseminated at a seminar in the Planning Commission participated by, among others, Anisuzzaman Chowdhury, special assistant to the chief adviser, former caretaker government adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman, also the executive chairman of Power and Participation Research Centre, and AK Enamul Haque, director general of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.
Monzur Hossain, Member (Secretary), GED presided over the seminar that was told that the MPI served as an additional indicator that complemented income-based poverty measures by capturing the multiple deprivations people experienced in their daily lives.
Discussants highlighted the importance of the development of the National MPI periodically and emphasised the utilisation of the MPI as a key innovative tool to eradicate poverty in all forms for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Anisuzzaman said that the MPI should be integrated into policymaking and planning processes to strengthen the institutional capacity in poverty eradication.
He called for further studies to understand the causes behind higher poverty in some districts of the country.
More than 40 per cent of the people are living in multidimensional poverty in five of the 64 districts. The districts are Bandarban, Cox鈥檚 Bazar, Sunamganj, Rangamati, and Bhola.
Multidimensional poverty varies substantially across the eight divisions in the country, with Khulna facing the smallest MPI at 0.064 per cent while Sylhet, located in the northeast of the country, has the highest MPI at 0.177 per cent.
Stating the incidence of multidimensional poverty higher among children at 28.70 per cent than among adults at 21.44 per cent, discussants said that the National MPI should be the guiding policy for interventions and resource allocations to improve the quality of schooling and learning outcomes for all age groups.
