More people earning their own livelihoods now
The number of people dependent on others for livelihood went down by 11 percentage points in the last four years, thanks to their increasing participation in the economy, a new survey found.
The national dependency ratio stood at 56 percent in 2012, down from 67 percent in 2008, said the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
The survey showed that almost equal number of people were employed in jobs in rural and urban areas in the same period. However, a significant number of people are still relying on the breadwinners of their families to make a living.
About 61 percent of the rural population were still dependent on others to survive in 2012, which was 72 percent in 2008.
The dependency rate in urban areas was 48 percent in 2012, from 59 percent in 2008, according to the state-run statistical agency.
The dependency ratio is an age-population ratio of those typically not in the labour force and those typically in the labour force. It is used to measure the pressure on productive population.
The BBS survey showed the size of household also went down, from 4.7 persons per household in 2008 to 4.5 persons in 2012.
Although the gradual economic expansion in the last three decades has added millions of women to the labour force, the number of women leading the households is still very low: 85.5 percent of the households were led by males in 2012, which was 89.3 percent in 2008.
Zaid Bakht, research director of think-tank Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said the dependency rate has gone down because of growing economic participation rate and lowering of the birth rate.
“Women are participating in economic activities more than in the past. Like their male counterparts, they are engaged in all sorts of economic activities.”
He said the garment sector, where more than 80 percent of the workers are women, has played a key role in helping provide employment opportunities to women from the rural areas that previously did not have any opportunity to be part of the formal workforce.
The economist also said self-employment is another area which is contributing to the economic participation of all segments of gender.
“Even, many people have been employed just by selling mobile talk time,” he told The Daily Star yesterday.
The number of economic units stood at 80.75 lakh in 2013, up 118 percent from the previous edition of the survey published in 2003.
According to the latest survey, the number of people with access to electricity increased by more than 12 percentage points to 65.6 percent in 2012 from 2008, thanks to the government's special attention on the power sector, which saw both generation capacity and production double in the last six years.
Both the generation and distribution of electricity has expanded in recent years, said Bakht.
Albeit decreasing, one-third of the population relied on kerosene to light up their houses in 2012, which was 47 percent in 2008.
The survey also showed that internal migration is increasing: it was 40.2 persons per 1,000 in 2012, from 30.6 in 2008.
The urban centres are facing huge pressure when it comes to migration, as 26.2 people per 1,000 entered the cities in search of better employment opportunities and livelihoods, from 17.3 people per 1,000 in 2008.
There was also a major shift in urban-to-urban migration: 43.5 persons among 1,000 people moved to new urban centres in 2012, which was 34.4 in 2008.
The rural-to-rural migration was also on the rise, perhaps because of national disasters and river erosions which forced a lot of people in the coastal and char areas to move to other areas in search of jobs every year.
The rural-to-rural migration was 16.2 persons per 1,000 in 2012. It was 12.5 in 2008. AKM Ashraful Haque, a senior official of the BBS and the leader of the project that conducted the survey, said the set of vital statistics would help the government devise its development policies.
According to the survey, the number of population in the country was 15.27 crore in 2012, with annual population growth rate standing at 1.36 percent, from 1.39 percent in 2008. More than 41 percent of the population lived in urban areas, nearly five percentage points more than in 2008.
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