Around 16% of Bangladesh population has graduated from poor to low income group in a decade from 2001 to 2011, according to a latest study of Pew Research.
During the period, the population in the poor group declined by 16.1% to 39.1% in 2011 while population in the low income group increased by 15.7% to 59.3%.
The population in the middle income and upper middle income groups also increased marginally. The study puts zero for the high income group of population both against the years of 2001 and 2011.
However, poor and low income population in 2011 still stands at 98.4% in Bangladesh – the second poorest country in Asia and South Pacific countries after Timor-Leste where 100% population was in this category, says a study of.
Along with Bangladesh, Tajikistan and Pakistan have also similar percentage of population poor or low income during the period.
The study styled Global population distribution by income, 2011, encompasses 28 countries in Asia and South Pacific – accounting for 3.8bn of the region’s population of 4.2bn in 2011 – and 30 countries in Africa – home to 826m of the continent’s population of 1.1bn.
This group includes India that was ranked 5th, where 97% of the population was poor or low income along with Nepal, and Lao PDR. Among the countries in the region, Nepal was placed in 16th where the share was 85%. In China, it was 78%.
Taiwan stood first having only 1% of its total population in poor and low income group, followed by Australia 2%, Israel 15% and Malaysia 32%.
People who live on $2 or less daily is defined to call poor, on $2.01-10 is in low income group, on $10.01-20 in middle income group, on $20.01-50 upper-middle income group, and on more than $50 high income group. The figures express purchasing power parities in 2011 prices.
Seven countries in the region have at least one-in-five people who are middle income: Jordan (43%), Turkey (35%), Kazakhstan (32%), Malaysia (31%), Thailand (29%), Iran (27%) and Bhutan (23%).
Jordan and Malaysia also have significant shares of people who are either upper-middle income or high income, 21% and 37%, respectively.
Globally in 2011, 13% of people were poor, 56% low income, 13% middle income, 9% upper-middle income and 7% high income.
On falling poverty rate during the period, the study found that poverty rate of Bangladesh declined 16 percentage points, from 55% in 2001 to 39% in 2011 and low-income population was 16% in 2011.
The study comprises 85 countries, including Bangladesh in which poverty fell in the first decade of the new century, 26 experienced a decline of at least 15 percentage points.
The first decade of this century witnessed an historic reduction in global poverty and a near doubling of the number of people who could be considered middle income. But the emergence of a truly global middle class is still more promise than reality.
In the 111 countries included in this study, 784m residents were middle income in 2011, compared with 399m in 2001. Thus, the middle-income population – those living on $10-20 per day – nearly doubled, increasing by 385m in the first decade of the new century.
Shifting from percent shares to absolute numbers, the scale of poverty’s plunge and the expansion of the global low-income population – and the reasons behind each – come into clearer focus. From 2001 to 2011, 669m people moved out of poverty.
The total increase in the low-income population from 2001 to 2011 – 694mn – is slightly greater than the decrease in the number of the poor population.