A vernacular daily last Wednesday carried two news items on one of its inside pages. Prominently displayed, one news item highlighted the average monthly income and expenditure of a family in 2022. The latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) made available those estimates. The other news item was related to the statement of eight US Congressmen on the failure to pay a minimum wage of Tk 23,000 to Bangladesh garment workers.
The BBS survey has estimated the average monthly income of a family in Bangladesh at Tk 32,422 and expenditure at Tk31,500. Each of the families, according to the survey, spends nearly 42 per cent on food and 14 per cent on house rent and utilities.
These numbers are misleading and do not depict a true picture. The BBS survey has taken into account the monthly income of all families, including the affluent ones, and got an average out of that. This does not show the actual monthly income of poor, lower and upper-middle-class and affluent families. The income of a poor family is not even one-third of the BBS survey estimate. So, the HIES should have presented the average estimate of income and expenditure of families according to their classes.
Besides, the BBS survey estimates are not that relevant now because of the soaring prices of most essential items. The expenditure on food in particular has gone up significantly during the past year. Yet the survey helps one get an idea about the expenditure pattern of a family. A family spends 1.8 per cent of its income or Tk578 per month on education. This may be true for a low-income family. Families belonging to other classes do spend a higher amount on education every month.
Eight US Congressmen on December 15 wrote a letter to the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) asking it to put pressure on the government of Bangladesh and owners of garment factories to accept the garment workers' demand for a minimum monthly wage of Tk23,000, equivalent to US$208.
The wage demanded by the garment workers is far less than the average income of a family, as shown by the BBS survey.
So, the BBS estimates have no relevance to the ground realities. Those might arouse a false sense of achievement among a section of policymakers and make them complacent to a certain degree. The BBS may justifiably say the estimates are average ones, not class-specific. But the fact remains that when made public, these estimates have the potential to produce a false impression.
Political rhetoric apart, everybody is aware of the difficulties that poor families have been facing in recent months because of the erosion of their income and soaring living costs. The long queues behind trucks selling a few essentials at subsidized rates in cities tell the tale of these families' plight. That people are jostling to secure a space in the queues or waiting for hours at designated spots for the TCB trucks has become a common sight these days. All these make the BBS estimates of the average monthly income of a family redundant and irrelevant.
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