Research Reports (2011): Economic Studies, Vol - XXVIII

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10361/13184

Browse

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Where NGOs go and do not go?
(BRAC, 2011-05) Mallick, Debdulal; Nabin, Munirul H.
We aim to investigate the role of output market imperfections in constraining the microfinance programme to mitigate credit market imperfections. We develop a model in which output market imperfections increase operating costs for nongovernment organizations (NGO) and create barriers for producers to market their goods. Therefore, NGOs operate in locations having good physical infrastructure and better productive. and marketing opportunities to minimize operating costs and maximize loan repayment. Using data from northern Bangladesh, we found strong support for the model predictions. NGO coverage in a village, measured both by percentage of NGO member households and number of NGOs working, decreased with distance of the village from marketplace and increased with adoption of modern irrigation method and soil quality. NGOs did not consider poverty incidence in the village. The results have important implications for development economics in general and impact assessment of microfinance programme in particular.
Sustaining health: the role of BRAC's community health volunteers in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Uganda
(BRAC, 2011-09) Reichenbach, Laura; Shimul, Shafiun Nahin
This study fills an important gap in current understanding about a critical aspect of BRAG's health programmes - the financial sustainability of the community health volunteers (commonly referred to as Shasthya Shebikas in Bangladesh) that are the cornerstone of BRAG's health programmes. Shasthya Shebikas (SS) are a cadre of female volunteers that are recruited and trained by BRAG to provide a range of essential healthcare services to their communities. What is unique about BRAG's approach is that, while these women can be considered volunteers they do not receive a salary or monthly stipend, they are provided with financial incentives on the sale of basic medicines and selected health commodities to their community. This sets BRAG apart from other health programmes that rely on either entirely salaried or volunteer cadres of community health workers (GHW) and raises important questions about the financial and programmatic sustainability and replicability of BRAG's approach. GHWs like the SSs play a crucial role in terms of human resources for health in Bangladesh and other countries. The 2007 Bangladesh Health Watch reports a shortage of 800,000 health workers in Bangladesh. Relying on formal institutions to train health workers requires significant time and financial investment, therefore, the SSs can be a critical and cost-effective input into the provision of essential health services in Bangladesh. BRAG was among the first organization to set up a community health volunteer (GHV) programme in Bangladesh in the 1970s. Its original GHV programme recruited and trained male paramedics to treat minor illness for which they received a small fee for referrals. Lessons from BRAG's early GHV experience included issues related to remuneration, supervision and accountability. BRAG addressed these issues by recruiting and training cadres of female health volunteers. Since then, BRAG has adapted and revised the programme in response to programmatic and community needs and has effectively scaled up the programme from 1,080 SSs in 1990 to 80,000 SSs operating in 64 districts in Bangladesh today. The SSs are an impressive force in terms of their numbers, geographic coverage, and quick mobilization. The 80,000 SSs provide home visits to 18 million households every month (BRAG 2009). The BRAG Health Programme operating model clearly relies on the successful recruitment. training, and retention of female GHVs. The rationale for BRAG's approach is that community-based financial incentives of a volunteer community health workforce can achieve wide programme coverage and respond to community essential healthcare needs while providing income opportunities to its female volunteers.
Promotion of improved cookstove in rural Bangladesh
(BRAC, 2011-05) Arif, Tahmid; Ashraf, Anik; Miller, Grant; Mobarak, Ahmed Mushflq; Akter, Nasima; Ali, ARM Mehrab; Sarkar, MA Quaiyum; Hildemann, Lynn; Dey, Nepal C; Rahman, Mizanur; Dwivedi, Puneet; Wise, Paul
This study aimed to explore the factors affecting the promotion of improved cookstove (ICS) to replace traditional stove and hence to combat indoor air pollution (lAP). The study was conducted in 58 randomly selected villages of Jamalpur sadar and Hatia upazilas (29 villages in each) in 2008. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Focus group discussions were performed in each village to divide the villages in three equal clusters as well as Paras and listed the opinion leader of the villages. Fifty randomly selected households and nine households of the opinion leaders were surveyed in each village. Thus, a total of 3,080 households were selected for quantitative survey with pre-designed questionnaire. These households were also offered two types of ICSs - portable and with-chimney under different experimental conditions. Among those who adopted ICS as was offered usually chose portable res since they believed this would reduce fuel consumption while they chose 1es with chimney to reduce pollution. We found that households were usually aware of lAP but not so much so of the existence of res. But once they came to know about it through this survey, they would expect ICS to be better than traditional stoves in producing better tasting food, less smoke emissions, less cooking and fuel collection time, etc. When compared with those who did not know about ICS before, prior knowledge on ICS was found to be associated with greater share of people thinking res was better than traditional in terms of taste of food and smoke emission. In most cases financial constraints was stated as a reason for not to adopt an res. The adoption decision was also found to be highly responsive to price. On the other hand, opinion leaders appeared to have a stronger impact on households' decisions when the leaders decided against 1es as opposed to when they decided in its favour. Although this is a very product specific study the results can provide a guideline to understand similar constraints for many other improved technologies that exist but are not generally adopted.
Lives and livelihoods on the streets of Dhaka city: findings from a population-based exploratory survey
(BRAC, 2011-03) Ahmed, Syed Masud; Hossain, Shamim; Khan, Antora Mahmud; Islam, Qazi Shafayetul; Kamruzzaman, Md.; Poverty--Environmental aspects.
BRAC has long been working to empower people and communities in situations of poverty, illiteracy, disease and social injustice. In recent years, BRAC has extended its activities to include the urban poor population living in the slums. As a continuation of this, and to be more inclusive, BRAC is going to implement innovative programmes for the street dwellers (who sleep on streets, railway terminals and platforms, bus stations, parks and open spaces, religious centres, construction sites and around graveyards and in other public places with no room in scale. BRAC Research and Evaluation Division carried out an exploratory cross-sectional survey on a sample of these populations from 10 purposely selected areas of Dhaka city to gather information on their lives and livelihoods, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Findings reveal that the street dwellers (driven by poverty and natural disasters) had to adopt a very precarious and humiliating life on the streets devoid of all basic amenities of life, under constant threat of eviction and harassment by the law-enforcing agencies and hoodlums. They were hard-working when considered in terms of working hours, but without proportionate return due to their involvement in low paying informal sector which is also irregular. They failed to improve their lot even after five or more years of street-living. According to them housing, food, and lack of jobs were the three most common problems for which they sought assistance. The implication of these findings for programme development is discussed.
Economic and social analysis of primary education in Bangladesh: a study of BRAC interventions and mainstream schools
(BRAC, 2011-11) Ahmad, Alia; Haque, lftekharul
Bangladesh has achieved significant progress in enrolment in primary schools including gender parity. Currently, two major problems are dropout before completing primary education and poor quality of education with low attainment of basic competencies. These problems are especially acute among children of poor families. While the government of Bangladesh has the major responsibility of primary education, and it aims at universal access to education through government schools, the needs of the very poor are largely catered by non-formal and religious schools. BRAG has, in the past two decades, made significant progress In providing primary education to poor children through targeted interventions. The type of education provided by diverse actors is likely to have different impact on individuals and society. There are, however, very few studies on economic and social analysis of primary education in Bangladesh, especially with respect to education provided by different types of schools. There is also a lack of cost-benefit analysis of primary education, and cost -effectiveness study of specific interventions. This study focuses on the diverse outcomes of primary education, and private and social costs of providing primary education by BRAG and mainstream providers in rural Bangladesh. The study is based on school and household level primary data collected during December 2009 to February 2010. Specifically, it addresses the following aspects: 1. Performance of schools in terms of dropout, repetition and completion rates of children (internal efficiency) 2. Factors associated with internal efficiency 3. Effects of BRAG pre-primary education on the performance of poor children in formal schools 4. The role of BRAG non-formal schools in enhancing completion of primary level education among poor children in rural areas 5. School participation pattern and educational achievement of children in rural Bangladesh from household-level data 6. Effects of education on occupational pattern and income 7. Assessing private and social benefits and costs of primary education 8. Estimating private and social rates of returns to education and comparing the cost-effectiveness of different interventions Household level longitudinal data, school level data and data on socioeconomic background of selected poor students are used in the study. Main findings Following are the major findings of this study: • Household level data indicate that there has been substantial improvement in the enrolment of children at primary level (95.2% among age group 7-11) in 2010 since mid-1980s. Since many children do not start school at the official age of 6 years, the overall rate of enrolment of children aged 6-10 years is lower (92%). The enrolment rate at secondary level has also improved over time but it is still low especially among the very poor (52%). • Low enrolment rate among children aged 6 indicates late start at school. Children from poor families especially male children tend to start late. This has negative implications for completion of primary education and quality of learning. • Our study confirms that early childhood development through pre-primary education has significant impact on school performance. The scores achieved in primary school examination are higher for students with pre-primary (BRAG) education compared to students without such education. This effect is especially prominent among girls from poor families. • Private economic benefits of education are higher for secondary education than primary education within all occupations. However, private rate of returns are higher for primary education than secondary because of low private cost at primary level and high cost at secondary level. • High social costs of primary education are compensated by many social benefits reflected in low fertility, improved health practices, greater technology exposure and positive attitude to children's education especially for girls. Primary education of mothers is one of the significant factors determining the probability of children going to secondary school. • There are differences in cost effectiveness of different interventions. Internal efficiency indicators are better for BRAG schools than mainstream schools. Cost per student completed is lower, and private rate of return is higher for BRAG. Greater efficiency is achieved through intensive monitoring and teacher input in spite of modest physical facilities. • Policy and research implications of our study are: intensive effort needed to bring children from ultra poor families into the formal system of education; free and compulsory pre-primary education can alleviate the problem of late start at school as well as improve the quality of primary education; general financial support to students at the secondary level needed; and there is urgent need for research on cohort analysis of dropout and completion rates through matching of household and school level data.
Asset transfer programme for the ultra poor: a randomized control trial evaluation
(BRAC, 2011-07) Das, Narayan C; Shams, Raniya
Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction (CFPR), an innovative approach to address extreme poverty, was launched in 2002 in rural Bangladesh. Evaluation of the first phase of the programme revealed that livelihoods of the participant households improved remarkably due to the intervention. But a number of shortcomings were identified regarding the evaluation method of the first phase, particularly due to adopting non-experimental evaluation design. This paper provides further evidence on the effectiveness of CFPR using randomized control trial design, which efficiently addressed much of the data limitation of earlier studies. Using 2007-09 panel data, this paper shows that the programme reduced the vulnerability of the participant households by raising their food expenditure and preparing livelihood pathways for them by generating self-employment and productive asset base including financial, physical and human capital. Remarkable effect on per capita income was observed. Positive impacts on natural assets like land acquisition through mortgaged-in, physical assets like livestock, financial assets like borrowing from NGOs, accumulation of savings and lending out in terms of cash or in kind have also been observed. However, evaluation shows that the programme did not have visible impact on education, a finding which is almost similar to the short-run evaluation of the CFPR phase I. This is probably not surprising because the programme does not provide any direct support on education. However, given that income of the participant household is increasing over time at an impressive rate, this may translate into human capital development through increase in education expenditure in the long-run.
Agricultural practice and its relation to poverty and food security in selected river basins in Bangladesh: a situation analysis
(BRAC, 2011-08) Ghosh, Shyamal C; Rahman, ANM Mahfuzur; Raza, Wameq A
Poverty and food security in the context of Bangladesh has become a major concern over time. While efforts have been intensified to increase crop yield through increased land use, using inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation equipments, and so forth, these activities are frequently threatened by natural and biological hazards such as floods, cyclones, tornadoes, drought, and insects/pests. Moreover, it is assumed that the climate change induced changes of precipitation pattern would have an impact on the flooding characteristics across the basins of the Ganges, Meghna and the Brahmaputra (GMB) rivers, which might influence the agricultural land use and livelihood of people living near the river basin. This study attempts to present a situation analysis in the context of agricultural practices in the GMB basins and its relation to poverty and food security. The study finds that the riverbank areas are encumbered with a greater burden of poverty compared to the comparison areas. In terms of food security, despite the fact that one third of the households reported being chronically poor, more than 95% households in 2008 reported to be food secured. Hence, the households in comparison areas were found in a relatively better situation compared to the riverbank areas.

Browse

Recent Submissions