Bangladesh FIVIMS Baseline Report: Agro- and Socio-economics 82 cases households are not among the poorest. Thus, neither female-headedness nor landlessness can be termed as the sole indicator of extreme poverty.
Rahman and Razzaque (2000) also asserted that a single criterion is not enough to define the ultra poor. The definition of the ultra poor needs to be addressed multi-dimensionally. Several indicators such as, income, occupation, housing and physical characteristics, geographical location, sex of the household head and household dependency may also be considered. Sen and Begum (1998) prioritized three indicators: land, housing and occupation, although, according to them, some other characteristics such as region and ethnicity do also matter.
It is revealed from the above discussion that identification of the ultra poor involves a
multiplicity of criteria. As we consider a number of indicators, their relative importance may also vary from case to case. By reviewing available literature and also following its own research findings BRAC has developed a number of criteria for identification of the ultra poor. A household becomes ultra poor if it meets at least 3 of the following criteria:
Households having negligible assets beyond the home they live in;
Households owning no more than 10 decimals of land including the homesteads;
Female headed households and households with divorced/abandoned/widowed women;
Adult women in the household doing labour based work outside the homestead Households where main male income earner is physically not able to work regularly;
Households where school going aged children have to sell labour;
Bangladesh FIVIMS Baseline Report: Agro- and Socio-economics 83 another debatable area where different estimates used by various data generating agencies provide different results.
Poverty and food insecurity largely varies across geographical regions and majority of the data sources actually provide divisional and on some indicators district level information. Due to lack of Upazila level disaggregated information it is sometimes difficult for the policy makers to target the real poor and most needy. In this regard the micro level information collected by various organizations could provide a very good insight.
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Bangladesh FIVIMS Baseline Report: Agro- and Socio-economics 86 Annex 1
Bangladesh FIVIMS Baseline Report: Agro- and Socio-economics 87
Annex 2