Introducing compulsory health insurance for government employees bears immense importance for stepping towards universal healthcare coverage in Bangladesh. Lack of scientific study on designing such scheme, in the Bangladesh context, motivates this paper. The study aims at designing a...

Despite a central element of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the progress in making pregnancy and childbearing safer for women has been slow in many developing countries. Though Bangladesh has achieved commendable progress in reducing maternal mortality in recent decades, the country...

Overall inflation in Bangladesh saw a surge in inflation rate amid rising trend of global commodity prices in the last few years. Inflation in 2009 was 6.66 percent and 7.31 percent in 2010. As higher inflation might have detrimental impact on different sectors, this study aims to assess the...

This paper presents an empirical investigation of socio-economic resilience to natural disasters of a tropical cyclone-prone coastal community in Bangladesh. It applies the state-and-transition model, a widely used applied ecology model, to (1) assess the current state of socio-economic...

Agriculture is a major economic activity in Bangladesh. It currently employs around 50 percent of country’s labor force and contributes around 20 percent of country’s GDP. Growth in agricultural sector has important linkages with the overall economy through various channels. It is important...

This paper presents the first household-level study to examine the combined impacts of the global food and financial crises on household food security and economic well-being in a developing country. Using longitudinal survey data of 1,800 rural households from 12 districts of Bangladesh over...

Addressing extreme poverty remains a key challenge for development in Bangladesh. BRAC initiated the “Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction” (CFPR) programme—a grant-based approach to tackle extreme poverty. This study provides an assessment of the cogency of this grant-based...

This study has explored the impact of the rise in food prices on the education of children in the poor and vulnerable households in Bangladesh. It appears that during early 2008 the prices of rice, pulses and edible oil increased tremendously which threatened the status of food security of these...

Using two surveys from Bangladesh, this paper provides evidence on the effects of microfinance competition on village moneylender interest rates and households’ dependence on informal credit. The views among practitioners diverge sharply: proponents claim that MFI competition reduces both the...