Why demography is so important for Bangladesh
Monday, 25 October 2010
E. Haque
OF course, there is no one shot or one oversimplified explanation for the poverty situation in Bangladesh. Nonetheless, economists in all settings go for a standard measure of the national pie and how much of it goes to each member of the population. The formula is simple. Take the net national product (NNP) or the total national income minus depreciations and leakages in a given year and divide it by the total number of the population. That should yield the individual amount available to each member of the population or the per capita income.
The per capita income is not a foolproof reflector of the monetary resources available to every member of a country’s population. There may be concentration of wealth into few hands or coteries, unfair opportunities for distribution of wealth and income regionally and between population segments, etc. It might distort the picture as some or many individuals may be seen actually possessing or earning many times more than the amount of the established per capita income. But that is another aspect.
It should suffice to say that the per capita income, on the whole and generally, is the best that economists can rely on to get a fairly reliable view of the annul availability of resources for consumption available to every person in the population of a country. The per capita income then gives a clue as to the purchasing power of people and the level of their standard of living.
The net national product (NNP) of Bangladesh on a rough estimate last year was the value of some US$ 74.10 billion and dividing that amount by some 164.4 million in the population (for this is the current size of the Bangladesh population according to UNFPA), the per capita income comes to something like $ 494. Only from these figures alone, it should be possible to see the relationship between the number in the population and per capita income. Supposing, the Bangladesh population last year was only half of the actual number, i.e. 82 million, then the per capita income today would be double at nearly US$ 1000. Population growth has nullified this potentiality of an advance in the per capita income. Notwithstanding the fact that the economic growth in the present decade puts Bangladesh in the fifth position among the top 16 countries of the world in terms of growth, the reflection of that growth in the per capita income was quite small because of the simultaneous growth of the population well above the preferred level in this period.
Even if the economic growth rate in Bangladesh accelerates into the double digit of 10 per cent or its neighbourhood in the next two decades, the present per capita income is unlikely to show any major increase for the simple reason that population would be also growing in this time. The present growth rate of population, according to governmental sources, is 1.48 per cent. The private views on population growth are higher. Even if the governmental estimate is accepted, there would still be some 180 million Bangladeshis well before the next quarter century in the absence of stringent population control activities.
OF course, there is no one shot or one oversimplified explanation for the poverty situation in Bangladesh. Nonetheless, economists in all settings go for a standard measure of the national pie and how much of it goes to each member of the population. The formula is simple. Take the net national product (NNP) or the total national income minus depreciations and leakages in a given year and divide it by the total number of the population. That should yield the individual amount available to each member of the population or the per capita income.
The per capita income is not a foolproof reflector of the monetary resources available to every member of a country’s population. There may be concentration of wealth into few hands or coteries, unfair opportunities for distribution of wealth and income regionally and between population segments, etc. It might distort the picture as some or many individuals may be seen actually possessing or earning many times more than the amount of the established per capita income. But that is another aspect.
It should suffice to say that the per capita income, on the whole and generally, is the best that economists can rely on to get a fairly reliable view of the annul availability of resources for consumption available to every person in the population of a country. The per capita income then gives a clue as to the purchasing power of people and the level of their standard of living.
The net national product (NNP) of Bangladesh on a rough estimate last year was the value of some US$ 74.10 billion and dividing that amount by some 164.4 million in the population (for this is the current size of the Bangladesh population according to UNFPA), the per capita income comes to something like $ 494. Only from these figures alone, it should be possible to see the relationship between the number in the population and per capita income. Supposing, the Bangladesh population last year was only half of the actual number, i.e. 82 million, then the per capita income today would be double at nearly US$ 1000. Population growth has nullified this potentiality of an advance in the per capita income. Notwithstanding the fact that the economic growth in the present decade puts Bangladesh in the fifth position among the top 16 countries of the world in terms of growth, the reflection of that growth in the per capita income was quite small because of the simultaneous growth of the population well above the preferred level in this period.
Even if the economic growth rate in Bangladesh accelerates into the double digit of 10 per cent or its neighbourhood in the next two decades, the present per capita income is unlikely to show any major increase for the simple reason that population would be also growing in this time. The present growth rate of population, according to governmental sources, is 1.48 per cent. The private views on population growth are higher. Even if the governmental estimate is accepted, there would still be some 180 million Bangladeshis well before the next quarter century in the absence of stringent population control activities.