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September 4th, 2010
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Geography, Infrastructure and Poverty Reduction | A blog to …
April 18th, 2010
The proportion of people living below the poverty line in Bangladesh has fallen sharply from close to 60% in 1990 to 40% in 2005. Using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics; economists Aphichoke Kotikula, Ambar Narayan and Hassan Zaman find that the number of poor people in Bangladesh fell by nearly 6 million between 1990 and 2005. The study, “To what Extent are Bangladesh’s Recent Gains in Poverty Reduction Different from the Past?” also shows substantial improvements in living conditions. For instance, the percentage of households with connections to electricity increased from 31% to 44% between 2000 and 2005.
Key factors contributing to poverty reduction include changes in certain household characteristics – most prominently, a smaller number of dependents and improvements in their education.
A sharp fall in household size from 2000 to 2005 was noted and this downward trend is associated with a fall in the number of children per household, which indicates a demographic change rather than household splitting or migration. Households in Bangladesh were also able to improve living standards for most family members thanks to sustained economic growth during this period.
Agricultural wage laborers continue to be the poorest occupational group in Bangladesh with a poverty rate of 72% compared to a national poverty rate of 40%. And while poverty reduction has occurred among all land owning groups, poverty fell by only 11% among landless households (compared to 38% among medium landowners).
The geographic location of a household also has a strong influence on its economic status. The large divide between the capital city Dhaka and its surrounding areas and its contrast with the rest of the country was notable in the eighties and nineties. Between 2000 and 2005, the economic gap between the Dhaka region and the rest of the country declined. But while most regions in the east have reduced their gap with Dhaka, much of the west and southwest have stagnated or fallen behind, resulting in an emerging East-West economic divide within Bangladesh.
The location of households matter and effects on household economic status vary widely even within the East and the West. The reason seems to lie on the availability of infrastructure and connectivity with local and national markets. In particular, shorter travel times to the thana (sub-district) headquarter and Dhaka are strongly associated with higher household consumption.
Compared to preceding decades, remittances and micro finances access have risen sharply since 2000.
Foreign remittances are clearly associated with the reduction in poverty and its role appears to have grown over the past decade. In Bangladesh, the poverty rate among recipients of foreign remittances is 17% compared to 42% among the rest. There are stark geographic disparities in the incidence of foreign remittances. Twenty-four percent of households in Chittagong and 16% of those in Sylhet received remittances from abroad in 2005, compared to less than 5% of households in Rajshahi, Khulna, and Barisal. This disparity roughly mirrors the geographic distribution of poverty in Bangladesh in 2005.
Access to microfinance has also increased significantly in recent years, but we do not yet know if it has had an impact on poverty reduction. To judge from evidence from India, the effect might not be there. In the study, “The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation” (MIT, 2009), Aghijit Banerjee and co-authors report on the first randomized evaluation of the impact of introducing microcredit in a new market. Half of 104 slums in Hyderabad (India) were randomly selected for opening of a microfinance branch while the remainder were not. Fifteen to eighteen months after the program, there was no effect between access to microcredit on average monthly expenditure per capita and no impact on measures of health, education, or women’s decision-making.
Microfinance is not a miracle path to poverty reduction. But better roads and infrastructure do seem to help, claim Rinku Murgai and Roberto Zagha in “Building Infrastructure for Accelerated Poverty Reduction” (World Bank, 2010). Their evidence is consistent with the Bangladesh experience.
Which policies do you think deserve priority in the fight against poverty?
Travel Training For Travel Representatives
April 2nd, 2010
Some people wrongly assume that becoming a travel agent is a simple job and requires little to no training. They would be far from correct in this assumption. If you have ever been quizzed on your geography knowledge you will be well aware of how simple it is to become confused about the location of some of the countries. For example if I said could you name me three countries that border Bulgaria some people wouldn’t even have a clue about one.
That is why there are a number of travel training packages available to help budding travel representatives in their pursuit of perfection of worldwide locations and knowledge. It is just as important to know about the countries cultures and traditions as it is to know about the location of the country. By undertaking a rigorous travel training program people in the industry can help provide the customers who use their service with informative and helpful information before leaving.
Of course there are several things that people working in the travel industry should know about as a matter of importance. For instance when people travel to a foreign country there are certain hand gestures that may be considered quite innocent in our society that are unacceptable to others. In Brazil it is not a good idea to give the thumbs up sign, it is considered extremely offensive. Also if you were to make the ok sign in Turkey or Greece it is considered extremely offensive and you could be implying to someone that they resemble an unpleasant body part.
If you think about it, although they often appear to be the butt of many jokes from comedians, travel agents are actually educated to an extremely high level and the chances are that most of them would thrash any of us in a quiz. Just because they have choose to specialise in a particular subject of travel doesn’t mean that their capacity for knowledge is small. If anything it is larger than most as the world is a wealth of information and knowledge and travel agents are expected to know about all of it. Because of this there is an incredible gap in the market for travel training, but it is vital that you get the correct type of training.
If you want to become a travel agent of representative, it is a wonderful world to get involved in, but don’t assume that you won’t have any travel training to do. Studying doesn’t finish in geography class for these individuals.