The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether the entry into the rickshaw pulling profession acts as a means of escaping poverty. The paper begins with a brief overview of the literature involving similar issues explaining both the short term and long term effects associated with staying in the profession. It then moves on to do a brief analysis of the short term effects-to see whether entering rickshaw pulling at least helps to escape poverty in the short run. Our results at the end, although highly crude, allow us to assume that rickshaw pulling may be a means of escaping poverty - at least in the short run.
Poverty is a problem endemic in Bangladesh, and particularly in the rural areas. This leads to migration out of these rural areas and into urban areas as people search for better employment opportunities and better lifestyles. Arriving in…show more content… Since such detailed information were not available to us, we looked into the service sector instead.
According to the Poverty Headcount in Figure 2, the number of poor people had decreased in percentage in the year 2005 compared to the year 2000 in the Rajshahi, Barisal, Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet divisions. Table 2, looks at the same issue using a different method of poverty measurement- namely, the poverty gap index.
Using Figure 2 and Tables 1 and 2,we look at each division more closely to try and arrive at a conclusion.
1) Dhaka: Dhaka seems to have a decrease in poverty by 15% (using the headcount method) and a 9.3% decrease (using the poverty gap) index. The proportion of rickshaw pullers from the Dhaka division is 6.1%.
2)Sylhet: With an 8% decrease in poverty (HC measure) and a 4.3% decrease (poverty gap index), Sylhet has 0.6% of rickshaw pullers.
3) Rajshahi: Rajshahi's depth of poverty decreased by 5.3% and 6% (HC measure)- a close approximate between the two. The proportion of rickshaw pullers from the divison are