Growing ‘inequality’ overshadows human development in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has improved little its position in latest human-development ratings by a UN agency as "growing inequality" overshadows advances.
The country ranked 139th out of 188 countries in the Human Development Index of 2015, released Tuesday by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The ranking is shared with Ghana and Zambia while Norway tops the global list.
The 2016 Human Development Report (HDR) focuses how human development can be ensured for every one -- now and in future. It includes the index for 2015.
Bangladesh advanced one step from previous year's (2014) 140th position. It updated the last report of 2015 and HDI 2014 which had earlier ranked Bangladesh 142nd.  
HDI is a measure for assessing progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and access to a decent standard of living.
In South Asia, the country ranked fifth in 2015 after Sri Lanka (73), the Maldives (105), India (131) and Bhutan (132). Ranking of Nepal remained unchanged at 144 while Pakistan improved one step to 147 from 148.
Bangladesh, however, performs better on long-term advancement in human development. The annual average growth rate of HDI during 1990-2015 stood at 1.64 per cent in Bangladesh while the rate was 1.52 per cent in India, 1.24 per cent in Pakistan and 0.82 per cent in Sri Lanka. Only Afghanistan and Myanmar posted higher growth rates than Bangladesh in South Asia. 
Between 1990 and 2015, Bangladesh's life expectancy at birth increased by 13.6 years, mean years of schooling increased by 2.4 years and expected years of schooling increased by 4.5 years. Bangladesh's GNI per capita also increased 159.8 per cent during the period under review.
So the country now belongs to the 'medium human development' category while it was 'low human development' category a decade ago.
Nevertheless, growing inequality in income as well as education casts shadow on human-development efforts of the country.  
The HDI is considered an average measure of basic human- development achievements in a country. So, it "masks inequality in the distribution of human development across the population at the country level," the HDI report pointed out.
"The 'loss' in human development due to inequality is given by the difference between the HDI and inequality adjusted HDI, or IHDI," says the report.   
"As the inequality in a country increases, the loss in human development also increases," it explained.
Bangladesh's HDI for 2015 is 0.579. The closer the country's HDI value is to 1, the better its human development index.
When the value is discounted for inequality, the HDI falls to 0.412 which means "a loss of 28.9 per cent due to inequality in the distribution of the HDI dimension indices."
Sri Lanka, India and Nepal experienced lesser loss in human development than Bangladesh due to inequality.
The report mentions that the increasing inequality globally has led to a stunting of HDI growth.  Dr Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, chairman of the Governing Council of Dhaka School of Economics, agreed that inequality is a major concern for sustainable human development.
"Though some improvement has already been there to reduce the inequalities in income, education and health, we have to do more," he told the FE Wednesday.
The HDI report also shows almost 1.5 billion people in developing countries living in multi-dimensional poverty. Of this, 54 per cent or 800 million are in South Asia while 34 per cent are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
While poverty fell significantly from 1990 to 2015, inequalities sharpened in this region.
South Asia also has the lowest public expenditure on health as a percentage of GDP--at 1.6 per cent. Bangladesh's expenditure is even much lower, at 0.8 per cent of GDP.
Dr Ahmad also opined that healthcare, especially for the poor and marginal people, deserves more attention.
"In many remote places of the country, poor people have almost no idea on improved medical treatment," he said.
Compared to heath, Bangladesh is better off in education with expected years of schooling reaching 10.2 years compared to 11.7 years in India and 8.1 years in Pakistan.
In this connection Dr Ahmad said: "While the base of our education is expanding, ensuring the better quality is now a key challenge."  
Bangladesh has a Gender Inequality Index (GII) value of 0.520 which put the country at 119th out of 159 countries in the 2015 index.
According to the UNDP report, 20 per cent of parliamentary seats are held by women in Bangladesh, and 42 per cent of its adult women have reached at least a secondary level of education compared to 44.3 per cent of their male counterparts. For every 100,000 live births, 176 women die from pregnancy-related causes; and the adolescent birth rate is 83 births.
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