Disaster, Population and Poverty Dynamics among Bangladeshi Household

Anuja Jayaraman, Pennsylvania State University
Jill L. Findeis, Pennsylvania State University

Common shocks such as floods are experienced by everyone in the population. However, some households or individuals are affected more than others. South Asia has the largest concentration of the worlds’ poor and nearly half of Bangladesh’s population lives below the poverty line. Bangladesh is also one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. The study first proposes to disaggregate the population into never, persistent and transient poor following the 1998 floods in Bangladesh using longitudinal household data. The second objective of the paper is to determine the differences between those among the poor who are able to eventually escape poverty following the flood (the transient poor) versus those unable to leave poverty (the chronic poor). Such an analysis would help in targeting the vulnerable and widen our knowledge of as to why some households within a population perform better than others in terms of recovering from a shock.