Editorial
Decline in poverty rate
Widening income gap challenging
The Household Income and Expenditure survey (HIES), 2010 has come up with some good news. The poverty rate at the national level has gone down by 8.5 per cent between 2005 and 2010. In absolute terms, this is no mean achievement, given the shock of global recession and internal political instabilities it had to absorb along the way.
The overall decline in poverty, however, does not reflect the proportionate distribution of national income among the different sections of the population. The Gini coefficient, for instance, has fallen by only 0.009, from 0.467 in 2005 to 0.458 in 2010. It reflects the lack of matching performance by the economy in addressing the ever-widening income gap. As Gini ratios serve to measure per capita income inequality vis-à-vis average increase in social income, it becomes obvious that far from moving towards an equitable distribution of wealth, it has rather remained concentrated in a few hands.
During the five-year survey period, traditional poverty pockets in Rajshahi and Rangpur could not show any significant improvement. Driven perhaps by climate change, Barisal division, which was once known for its surplus crops, has now joined the rank of poorer districts with a poverty rate of 40 per cent.
On a par with the general decline in average poverty level, rural as well as urban poverty has also diminished between 2005 and 2010. That brings to the fore government's continued emphasis on poverty alleviation through various income generation programmes for the poor. We cannot also forget the contribution being made by the non-government organisations (NGOs) in addressing poverty, especially in the countryside.
To help reduce rural poverty, the visible shift in the people's dietary patterns from cereals dominated
meals to a wider basket of potato, fish and meats deserves mention.
While the economy's overall performance is praiseworthy in terms of combating poverty, there are still genuine reasons for caution seeing that increase in social income has not readily translated into reduction in the rich-poor gap.
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