Abdul Bayes || November 26, 2023
OF THE 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the first one calls for an end to poverty in all its manifestations by 2030. The other SDGs, particularly SDG 3, 4, and 5, also have an imperceptible influence on reducing poverty. SDG 1 also aims to ‘ensure social protection for the poor and vulnerable, increase access to basic services, and support people harmed by climate-related extreme events and other economic, social, and environmental shocks and disasters.’
Bangladesh’s progress on poverty reduction, in the light of the SDGs, is redeeming, if not remarkable. According to an official document, during the Seventh Five-Year Plan period, extreme poverty decreased from 12.9 per cent in 2016 to 10.5 per cent in 2019, with the poverty elasticity of GDP growth at 0.8. This elasticity, compared to 1.1 in earlier periods, indicates that the rate of poverty reduction has slowed down. It may be mentioned here that a large number of people fell into poverty following the Covid outbreak, commonly referred to as the new poor.
The same document elsewhere says, ‘Nevertheless, an important policy challenge that has emerged as a pressing concern is income inequality.’ The Gini coefficient is running very high. The burgeoning effect of income inequality, caused by the huge accumulation of wealth through illegal means and money laundering, loan defaults, land grabbing, etc, could lead to the Schumpeterian ‘tunnel effect’ with massive social unrest in society.
Although we have done pretty well in terms of reducing the headcount ratio, we possibly could not throw appropriate efforts and weight into ‘ensuring social protection for the poor and vulnerable, increasing access to basic services, and supporting people harmed by climate-related extreme events and other economic, social, and environmental shocks and disasters.’ Social and environmental shocks are spreading fast, climate-related complexities are compounding the poverty situation, and disasters are looming large — all to add to the overall poverty syndrome.
Recently, BRAC, Save the Children Bangladesh, World Vision Bangladesh, and the United Nations Development Programme in Bangladesh organised a panel at the Technical Workshop on ‘Graduation Approach: Lessons from Bangladesh’. Assumingly, the purpose of the workshop was to shed light on how to make SDGs attainable with efficiency and equity objectives at hand.
The workshop was rich in terms of the quality of the conversation: ‘to do more together, concerted action across policy, practice, and knowledge to achieve SDG 1 in Bangladesh’. The overarching theme of the three working groups was thought-provoking. It addressed the following questions: How can we simultaneously reduce poverty and inequality? How can we strengthen resilience? How do we address rapid urbanisation and new poverty dynamics?
The executive director of the Brac Institute of Governance and Development, Dr Imran Matin made three pertinent points to ponder that we need to look at and policymakers need to note:
Data deficiency: It is true that there is plenty of data generated by both the private and public sectors in Bangladesh, but allegedly accurate data is deficient. Matin emphasised the need for much better data governance with a strong public accountability focus, and public use is the call of the hour. Data hesitancy, weak data coordination, not having near-real-time data, non-disaggregated data, a lack of data on critical emerging issues, etc. are real constraints to driving collaborative impact on poverty reduction or addressing other socio-economic problems.
Social protection: Why is social protection important for SDG 1? Strong social protection systems are essential for mitigating their effects and preventing many people from falling into poverty. The Covid outbreak had both immediate and long-term economic consequences for people across the globe, and despite the expansion of social protection during the pandemic, 55 per cent of the world’s population — about 4 billion people — are entirely unprotected. Imran Matin is of the view of reimagining social protection in the context of emerging economic dynamics. A focus on reducing vulnerability and innovations to enhance productivity in social protection should be considered. We need to build on the framework in the National Social Protection Strategy with these ideas. It is worth mentioning here that, in response to the cost-of-living crisis, ‘105 countries and territories announced almost 350 social protection measures between February 2022 and February 2023. Yet 80 per cent of these were short-term in nature, and to achieve the goals, countries will need to implement nationally appropriate universal and sustainable social protection systems for all’.
Public-private partnership: Partnering with the private sector to unleash new financing, such as impact investment, for proven interventions like graduation programmes with high social returns. To create new market linkages and employment, it will also require understanding and working closely with the private sector. The private sector has a major role to play in determining whether the growth it creates is inclusive and contributes to poverty reduction. It can promote economic opportunities for the poor.
The challenge of reducing poverty and income inequality is not unique to Bangladesh; it is a global phenomenon. A World Bank document described the problem in the following way:
If current trends continue, 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty, and only one-third of countries will have halved their national poverty levels by 2030.
Despite the expansion of social protection during the Covid crisis, over four billion people remain entirely unprotected. Many of the world’s vulnerable population groups, including the young and the elderly, remain uncovered by statutory social protection programmes.
The share of government spending on essential services, such as education, health, and social protection, is significantly higher in advanced economies than in emerging and developing economies.
A surge in action and investment to enhance economic opportunities, improve education, and extend social protection to all, particularly the most excluded, is crucial to delivering on the central commitment to end poverty and leave no one behind.
The global poverty headcount ratio at $2.15 is revised slightly up by 0.1 percentage points to 8.5 per cent, resulting in a revision in the number of poor people from 648 to 659 million.
It means what has been done so far is perhaps necessary but not sufficient in search of a poverty-free situation. More commitment is required to reach our collective goal.
Abdul Bayes, a former professor of economics and vice-chancellor of Jahangirnagar University, is now an adjunct faculty at East West University.
This article was originally published on New Age.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect PARI policy.
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