Publication: Bangladesh, a Middle Income Country by 2021 : What Will it Take in Terms of Poverty Reduction?
Date
2014
ISSN
Published
2014
Author(s)
Abstract
The vision 2021 plan and the associated
perspective plan 2010-2021, adopted by the Government of
Bangladesh lay out a series of development targets for 2021.
Among the core targets identified to monitor the progress
toward the vision 2021 objectives is that of attaining a
poverty headcount of 14 percent by 2021. The purpose of this
paper is to answer the following question: given
Bangladesh's performance in poverty reduction over the
last decades, can the author expect the proportion of the
country's population living in poverty to be 14 percent
by 2022? Using data from the last three household income and
expenditures survey, we examine changes in poverty rates
during 2000-2010, estimate net elasticity of poverty
reduction to growth in per-capita expenditure, and then
project poverty headcounts into the future. Our poverty
projections based on the last three Household Income and
Expenditure Surveys (HIES) surveys suggest that Bangladesh
will achieve its Millennium Development Goal, or MDG goal of
halving its poverty headcount to 28.5 percent by 2015
significantly ahead of schedule. Attaining the vision 2021
poverty target of 14 percent by 2021, however, is less
certain as it requires a Gross Domestic Product, or GDP
growth of at least 8 percent, or more than 2 percentage
points higher than that observed in recent years.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Gimenez, Lea; Jolliffe, Dean; Sharif, Iffath. 2014. Bangladesh, a Middle Income Country by 2021 : What Will it Take in Terms of Poverty Reduction?. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18668 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”