Life expectancy increases by 2 yrs: Report

The life expectancy of people in Bangladesh has increased by about two years in 2015 from 2011, according to a new report of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).

The report titled ‘Bangladesh Sample Vital Statistics 2015’ reveals that the life expectancy of people was 69 years in 2011 and it reached 70.9 years in 2015.

The report findings were disseminated at a discussion at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the capital on Wednesday.

The data of the report was collected in 2015 covering a total of 215,811 households of the country.

The report shows that the overall sex ratio has seen a moderate decline from 104.9 in 2011 to 2015 over the last five years.

The dependency ratio recorded a notable fall from 80 in 2002 to 55 in 2015. The average household size dropped from 4.5 in 2011 to 4.4 in 2015.

Women in the country are still dominated by men as heads of about 87 percent families are male, the report reveals.

Adult literacy rate has shown an increase by about 10 percent over the last five years - from 55.8 percent in 2011 to 64.6 percent in 2015, reports United News of Bangladesh.

The increase in adult literacy rate was more pronounced (11 percent) among women than Women (8 percent) over this period, the report says.

Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, State Minister for Planning MA Mannan and Secretary of Statistics and Informatics Division Muzammel Hoq, among others, spoke at the discussion.