News Desk :
An estimated 32.4 million people have slipped into poverty due to the second wave of coronavirus lockdown, according to a study.
The situation has forced more people to take up less skilled jobs to survive and becoming more resilient on loans, the study observed.
The findings were revealed in a follow-up version of a series of surveys started last year by Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) and BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD)
The organisations have been conducting as a multi-phase study since April 2020 to capture the evolving health and economic crisis among low-income communities in Bangladesh due to Covid-19. During the fourth phase of the study conducted in August 2021 this year, 4,871 households comprising an average of 4.94 members were interviewed. Researchers found that the number of income earners per household is 1.36.
The reverse trend of the new poor represents a worrying scenario, says BIGD Executive Director Dr Imran Matin.
The non-food expenditure per doubled in urban slums while it increased around 2.9 times over the preceding year for rural households, he said, adding that the percentage of households skipping a meal jumped from 2 percent in March, 2021 to 7 percent in August, 2021.
“The medical costs have also increased almost three times during the last 14 months,” he said.
According to him, savings were no longer a significant coping options during the second wave of lockdowns, when reliance on loans and shop credit rose significantly.
“A majority (of responders) borrowed for daily consumption and health, but 15-20% also borrowed for business or loan payment,” he said.
Meanwhile, the average outstanding loan as a percentage of annual income has increased consistently both in rural and urban slums.
This erosion of financial capacity continued even during the March-August, 2021 period, rising from 25% to 28%.
During June 2020, some 21.24% respondents were found to be poor. While the number did come down to 14.75% in March 21, it rose again to 19.54%.
PPRC Executive Chairman Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman said if they estimate the portion of new poor in national states in light of their findings, the estimation would be 32.4million people.
He said that the Covid-19 crisis brought to fore a different facet of resilience as an unfair bargain of a vicious cycle.
He says, the average savings as a percentage of annual household income is yet to recover to pre-Covid level.
He reiterated that not only are people opting for non-skilled jobs and becoming more dependent on loans, the recovery of unemployment has reversed to 14% this August.
“This all indicates a distress resilience of these people,” he said.
According to the study, food inflation at the time of no savings, healthcare availability, vaccination and marriage of children has become the major concern for the families.
Dr Rahman opined that in order to recover from this crisis a strong policy needs to be in place to look into these people who have been pushed into chronic (35%) and churning or transient poor (56%) during the study period.
He recommends focus on the urban areas, as the portion is much higher (chronic 46% and transient 51) there.
According to him, proper healthcare response to the infection, administrative response to lockdown measures and economic policy response to support recovery needs to be in place at the same time.
He observed that while Bangladesh has rightly refrained from embracing a zero-Covid policy built on prolonged lockdowns, a clearer and effective approach to the alternative of ‘living-with-COVID’ policy has also been missing.
He said, a credible integration of the three essential policy strands – health, administrative and economic – is imperative to recovery.
