19.2% of country’s population lives below poverty line
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As many as 19.2% of the population in Bangladesh lives below the poverty line, with the poverty rate in urban areas standing at 16.5%, and over 20% in rural areas, according to the Poverty Map of Bangladesh 2022 report.
The report, prepared by the Poverty and Livelihood Statistics Cell of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), was released at a publication event on Thursday at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka. Md Mahbub Hossain, Secretary of the Statistics and Information Management Division, was the chief guest at the event.
The report reveals that the highest poverty rate, 26.6%, is in the Barisal Division, while the lowest is in the Chittagong Division, at 15.2%. While the poverty rate in Dhaka has increased to 19.6%, it has decreased in the Rajshahi and Mymensingh Divisions. The highest concentration of poverty, 63.2%, is found in the Dasar upazila of Madaripur.
In 2023, the BBS's Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2022 reported a poverty rate of 18.7%.