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Impacts of the Major Promotional Safety Net Programs in Bangladesh: A Quantitative Assessment for Graduation from Poverty

Corresponding Author : Dr. Md. Zakir Hossain (mzhossain.bds@gmail.com)

Authors : Dr. Md. Zakir Hossain (mzhossain.bds@gmail.com)

Keywords : Safety Net, Poverty, Bangladesh, Quantitative, Households

Abstract :

In Bangladesh, the social safety net programs (SSNPs) are working with two approaches - protecting the poor people from severe vulnerable conditions and upgrading the poor from poverty. The study aimed to evaluate the achievement of household’s economic indicators because of benefits received from the selected promotional SSNPs in Bangladesh. Based on the data collected from 600 beneficiary and 300 non-beneficiary households covering 30 rural clusters, the study has employed difference-in-difference (DID) method in addition to case-control and before-after comparison to evaluate the impact of the benefits from the promotional SSNPs. The case-control analysis indicates that income and expenditure were higher for the beneficiary households than the non-beneficiary counterparts. The before-after comparison indicates that household income has increased by 45.88% and 12.54% for the beneficiary and the non-beneficiary households respectively, while the expenditure has increased by 24.74% and 18.55% over the period 2015-2018. The DID method explores that the net increase of income and investment expenditure was 33.34% and 18.22% respectively for the beneficiary households during 2015-2018, might be due to the SSNP benefits. Despite the positive impact of the promotional SSNPs on income and investment expenditure for the beneficiary households, however the overall progress was not sufficient for graduating from poverty. 

Published on December 31st, 2021 in Volume 32, Issue 2, Social Sciences