Demographic events and economic conditions of rural households in Bangladesh

Abstract

Demographic events, such as death of adults and marriage of children, place a heavy burden on household economy, while economic and labour migration may lessen the burden. This study examined the effects of demographic events on economic condition of rural households in Bangladesh. Household possessions of durable assets in the Matlab demographic surveillance area in 1996 and 2005 were used to calculate asset scores, a proxy for long-term economic condition. Events of adult (aged 15–59 years) death and marriage of girls during 1996–2005 were associated with lower asset scores in 2005 compared to households with no such events. Out-migration of adult males, but not females, to urban areas or other countries and marriage of boys were associated with higher asset scores in 2005 compared to households with no out-migration or boy's marriage. Findings suggest that the government should attach high priority to adult health, abolition of dowry, and encourage out-migration.

KEYWORDS:

• household
• asset score
• labour migration
• adult death
• marriage
• Bangladesh

Notes

1. However, the extremely poor receive donations from well-off relatives, neighbours and others, thus they are not significantly affected by wedding costs.

2. The rural poor are pushed by poverty to other rural and urban areas and the rural non-poor are pulled by better jobs and earning options in urban areas or other countries (Alam & Khuda, 2011a). The rural-to-urban migration is the most common direction for males and forms a group of diverse economic conditions. This may explain why the household economic conditions deteriorated for some of this group and improved for some after-migration, which were different from the other two groups.