Currently 46 percent children are living with multidimensional poverty in the country.
The poorer children get less scope of health and education as they have to engage in low wage work after entering the labour market at an early age, reports BSS.
That’s why they cannot come out of the vicious circle of poverty.
On the other hand, children of the solvent families face a different type of poverty. They suffer from mental poverty despite having access to basic rights like education and health.
Concerned people said while framing a policy to face multidimensional poverty of the children, it is needed to take into consideration the different types of poverty of the higher and moderate - income families.
In this connection, they opined that one-way policy cannot remove the multidimensional poverty of children.
Statistics
Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Director and Principal Researcher Fahmida Khatun said the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) prepared a report on human development in 2017 by taking 103 countries into consideration and holding the multidimensional poverty index.
The report mentioned that 26.5% people of these countries are poor and the rate was 48% in South Asian countries. And among them, nearly 50% are children.
The poverty rate in Bangladesh came down to 20.5% in the fiscal 2018-19. The figure was 21.8 at the end of 2017-18 fiscal year.
“Extreme poverty rate also dropped to 10.5% in 2018-19, which was 11.3% in 2017-18,” Planning Minister MA Mannan recently said quoting the data from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
Fahmida Khatun, however, said there is a huge number of children in Bangladesh who are living with multidimensional poverty.
“So, we’ve to take steps for achieving proper capability in removing this type of poverty of the children,” she observed.
Children suffering
In the field of education, there are two important issues — one is attending school and another is completion of study, which means not being dropped out from school.
On the other hand, fuel for cooking, sanitation, safe drinking water, electricity, housing and resources are considerable issues in measuring the living standard.
Deputy Chief of Planning Commission’s General Economic Division Md Monirul Islam said the poor children suffer from malnutrition as well as they are deprived of education and getting rights to live properly.
“At one stage, they are engaged in child labour and fall into the trap of less productivity and low wage. So, to solve these issues, a coordinated policy is required,” he said.
Multidimensionality of poverty
The CPD director Fahmida Khatun said it is not possible to analyze the issues of education, health, nutrition and growing up naturally through only income and poverty.
To analyze the poverty situation, taking various dimensions of poverty into consideration is needed.
Poverty could be measured by considering education, health and living standard through multidimensional poverty analysis method.
UNICEF’s Social Policy Expert Hasina Begum said children consist a large portion of Bangladesh’s poor population. Poverty is measured in Bangladesh on the basis of per capita income.
The yardstick of poverty is made by fixing ability of purchasing 2,221 calories of food daily as a basic demand, she said, terming measurement of poverty through income as a partial outlook.
Though children of some families live over the poverty line, they may suffer from illness, lack better housing and could be deprived of education.
So many countries have taken the issue of considering poverty multidimensionally. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) put emphasis on assessment of multidimensional poverty.
The number of poor people in Bangladesh could be raised further if the poverty is measured through multidimensional poverty index.
Multidimensional poverty measurement is the proper method for identifying poverty. The same method is applicable for the children too.
Planning Commission General Economic Division’s Senior Secretary Shamsul Alam said, the government has taken a social safety strategy paper in 2015 incorporating the issue of lifecycle-based social safety of the people.
The paper clearly mentioned the matter of protection of the children from pregnancy period to till 18 years and bringing all of them under safety programme.
It gave importance to strengthen immunization, child health and sanitation programmes. In the SDGs, the issue of ensuring nutrition for all children by 2025 and their primary and secondary education by 2030 has been included.
In the seventh five-year plan, Alam said, the issues of removing child labour, protecting the children from violence and providing pre-primary education to children aged between three and five have been categorically mentioned.
“The government in principle has some structures and I think their proper implementation is very important to this end,” he noted.
