There is limited understanding of the coping strategies, constraints, and trajectories of new-poor households who remained poor even three years after COVID-19 hit. This study aims to fill the gap of in-depth qualitative understanding of how social, economic, and political factors affect new-poor households’ ability to recover from the pandemic.
Researchers: Sohela Nazneen; Syeda Salina Aziz; Raihan Ahamed; Anuradha Joshi; Miguel Loureiro; Niranjan Nampoothiri; Jahid Nur; Nowshin Sharmila; Rabeena Sultana Ananna; Shahaduz Zaman
Partner(s): Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
Timeline: 2022-2024
Method: Governance Diaries (A qualitative longitudinal method)
Status: Completed
Contact: Syeda Salina Aziz; salina@bracu.ac.bd
Context
Bangladesh witnessed a significant rise in poverty rates during the pandemic. Even households that had stable livelihoods faced severe livelihood shocks and were pushed into poverty, creating a large segment of the population one might call the ‘new poor’. Many of these households are trapped in poverty as the usual coping strategies are not effective and support structures are severely strained. Research on the new poor in Bangladesh have documented livelihood shifts, coping strategies, and access to social protection mainly through a quantitative approach. The current body of research lacks an in-depth qualitative understanding of how social, economic, and political factors affect new-poor households’ ability to recover. Furthermore, there is limited understanding of the coping strategies, constraints, and trajectories of new-poor households who remain poor even after three years of the pandemic. This study attempts to answer how the new poor are attempting to recover, the strategies they have they been using to cope, the constraints they face, and the implications for governance of their efforts.
Publications
Working Paper
Title: Being New Poor in Bangladesh: Coping Strategies, Constraints, and Trajectories
Conference Presentations
Title: Being New Poor in Bangladesh: Coping Strategies, Constraints, and Trajectories
Presented at the CLEAR final conference and the 1st Development Studies International Conference 2024
Blog/Opinion
Media
Pandemic’s new poor unable to recover: study
Methodology
To explore which coping strategies new-poor households used in their attempt to survive the pandemic and bounce back to their pre-pandemic economic status, we used a household-level qualitative panel survey. We refer to this approach as ‘governance diaries’, an iterative alternative to ethnographic studies and large-n surveys that often lack comparability and sensitivity respectively, to gather qualitative information over time. As such, the method brings together the strengths of ethnographic, longitudinal, and comparative approaches to study changes in complex behaviour. It uses qualitative panel data that identifies the lived experiences of governance and service provision, and how that plays out over time in relation to unfolding events or processes – such as the effects of a pandemic.
Findings
The research found two types of new poor based on their pre-pandemic economic position— never poor and vulnerable non-poor. Key factors influencing recovery included having strong networks, access to loans, and not being limited by social norms of honour and shame. The key strategies employed by households included financial, livelihood, cost-reduction, and social safety strategies. We found that intermediaries were key to accessing social safety nets. Importantly, having political affiliations with the ruling party helped several households in getting documentation and accessing social protection schemes.
New-poor households’ strategies of recovery faced a variety of constraints in the form of asset depletion and debt traps, not having access to the ‘right’ networks, distrust and low expectations of the state, and health-related hazards. The never-poor households were generally recovering while the vulnerable non-poor were not. Networks played an important role in their ability to recover apart from their general solvency compared to that of the vulnerable non-poor.
Recommendations
Building shock-responsive social protection measures that can cover new-poor households emerges as an important policy step. NGOs such as BRAC are designing interventions to assist the new poor with credit plus interventions (Gomes et al. 2023), which can be further scaled up to provide livelihood support to the new poor. The process of acquiring documents the new poor need to access social safety nets, migration, and other services must be less cumbersome. The government-run digital platforms for acquiring these documents need better interfaces, and processes at the local level need to be simplified.
Gatekeeping and elite capture of state resources at the local level remain key areas of concern with respect to accessing state support. The absence of complaints from the new poor is telling. It is important to build citizens’ voice at the local level. Formal mechanisms for citizen engagement exist at the local level. These platforms need to be strengthened.
