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Effectiveness of Food Assistance Programs in Bangladesh

Salman Zaidi

Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit, South Asia Region, The World Bank, USA

Bangladesh boasts a wide array of targeted food assistance programs that strive to achieve a number of important developmental objectives. Findings from the 2000 Household Income and Expenditure Survey suggest that these programs are reasonably well-targeted towards the poor. Most of the pro-poor targeting is due to targeting the poor within communities rather than central actions to target poor areas. However, any definitive conclusions about the ‘pro-poor’ nature of spending on these programs are clouded by the survey findings which suggest that a large share of the total resources devoted to these programs disappear before reaching their intended beneficiaries. If these ‘unaccounted-for’ benefits are in fact appropriated by the non-poor, the incidence of spending on these programs would likely be pro-rich. Greater efforts to channel a higher share of resources to regions with greater need of assistance and to improve monitoring systems to reduce leakage from the system are likely to yield high dividends.

Key Words: Bangladesh • benefit incidence • food assistance • poverty

Journal of Developing Societies, Vol. 21, No. 1-2, 121-142 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0169796X05053069


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