Non-farm Employment and Poverty in Rural Bangladesh

Given the problems of poverty and food insecurity in Bangladesh, the study entitled Non-farm Employment and Poverty in Rural Bangladesh: A Case of Advanced Villages developed a certain systematic framework from individual participation in non-farm employment (NFE) to measuring their effects on household economy, and verified the framework by standard micro-econometrics techniques using original field level data in the context of relatively advanced villages. The study could be considered a contribution to the discipline of rural economics. The contributions, especially, are characterized by (1) setting the research problem in the field, (2) the broader definition of non-farm sector (NFS), (3) analyses on both overall and sector-wise NFE, (4) approach to growth linkages of household non-farm enterprises (HNFEs) and (5) comprehensive effects of non-farm income (NFI) on household economy. Based on the findings, it concluded that the overall NFI significantly mattered for reducing income poverty but not for education poverty. Such conclusion could draw attention to the development partners in Bangladesh and other similar developing countries.