Title_  Income Inequality, Poverty and Food Security of Plain Land Ethnic Communities of Bangladesh

Author_  Farhana Afrin Tithi, Basanta Kumar Barmon, Sanzidur Rahman

Pages  16-32

Abstract_  The present study examines the level of income inequality, poverty and food security of two plain land ethnic communities residing alongside ethnic Bengalis (the majority in Bangladesh). It uses a randomly selected sample of 150 households (50 Bengali, 50 Koch and 50 Santal) from Phulbari subdistrict of Dinajpur district, located in the northwestern region. Results revealed that the level of illiteracy is highest for the Koch community, followed by the Santal community estimated at 58% and 50% respectively, as compared to the Bengali rate of 46%. It is encouraging to know that income inequality is much lower for the Koch and Santal communities as compared to the Bengali community, estimated at 0.24, 0.20 and 0.35, respectively, but their average annual total income is about 59.2% and 43.0% lower than the total annual income of the Bengali community. All measures of poverty and depth of poverty is much higher for both the Koch and Santal communities. Similarly, the level of food insecurity is very high for both ethnic minority communities. About 86% of both communities are food insecure. Furthermore, 60% and 52% of Koch and Santal households classify as absolute poor, consuming less than 1,805 kcal/capita/day, whereas the figure for the Bengali community is 44% and the national average for rural areas is 35.2%, respectively. Policy implications include investments in education and other income generating programs targeted at the ethnic minority communities so that they can participate in economic activities and reduce their poverty and food insecurity levels.

Keywords_  Income inequality, Poverty, Depth of poverty, Food security, Ethnic people, Bangladesh