People of the Coastal Zone

Demography
According to the 2001 population census, there are about 6.85 million households in the coastalzone. The total population of these households is about 35 million, representing 28 percent of the population of Bangladesh. They live in an area of 47,211 km2 , which is 32 percent of the area of Bangladesh.

There are more men than women. The sex ratio in the coastal zone is 102 compared to 104 outside the coastal zone.3 This may be a reflection of male out-migration being relatively higher in the coastal zone than in the rest of the country. Within the coastal zone, Chittagong and Khulna with more concentration of urban population have a higher sex ratio (109 and 108 respectively, reflecting a relatively high male in-migration). The average size of households is 5.08. This is higher than in other parts of the country (4.77) and is indicative of a higher dependency ratio (Appendix 1).

The demographic dependency ratio4 is 1.06 compared to 1.01 outside the coastal zone. This is mainly because of the higher concentration of children and old people. In the coastal zone, 46 percent of the people are below 15 years of age, which is likely to have profound implications in the job market in the future (Appendix 2).

Social stratification

Criteria
The society is not indivisible. Every individual is unique, but there are sections of the population with identical background, resource ownership, interests, occupations and aspirations. They are often referred to as social strata or classes. Although members of a particular stratum may not be perfectly homogeneous, they are often defined in terms of one or more common denominators. In customary development literature, social strata in a rural setting are often defined in terms of economic condition with landholding as the principal criterion. BBS literature also uses landholding to categorize different strata of rural households. In the 1996 agriculture census, households are grouped into four broad strata. They are: non-farm households owning less than 0.05 acre of land; small farm households owning 0.05 to 2.49 acres of land; medium farm households owning 2.50 to7.49 acres of land; and large farm households owning 7.50 acres or more.
 

During the inter-census period (agriculture census) between 1960 and 1996, the composition of the rural households changed significantly. The social stratification shows concentration of households with no or small amount of land on the one hand, and concentration of land with fewer households on the other (see Table 1, Figure 2).

Table 1: Distribution of rural households in the coastal zone
 

Table 1 implies that in 1960, 40% of the households could make a living from the land they owned; while in 1991, it is only 13%. The pattern of household distribution in the coastal zone is different from the non-coastal zone. In the coastal zone, the proportion of non-farm households is lower and that of small farmers is higher than other parts of the country. The proportion of non-farm households (landless) is higher in the Chittagong-Cox’s Bazar area and lower in Barisal-Barguna-Pirojpur area. Lakshmipur, Barisal and Chandpur have higher concentration of small farmers, while Patuakhali and Barguna have relatively higher proportions of large farmers (for details, see Appendices 3 and 4).
Landholding alone does not necessarily define social strata. People’s livelihoods largely center round occupations. Intra-stratum relationship and cohesion depend on how they are related to structure and organization of production and this often works as strength (or weakness) in the development of their collective interests.

Income poverty
The coastal zone is relatively income-poor compared to the rest of the country. Average per capita GDP (at current market price) in the coastal zone was Tk 21,379 in 1999-2000, compared to Tk 22,684 outside the coastal zone. Districts of Chittagong and Khulna have higher GDP per capita, while Noakhali, Lakshmipur, Chandpur, Shariatpur, Gopalganj and Jhalakati have much lower GDP per capita (see Appendix 5).

Among the occupational groups, incidence of poverty is the highest among agriculture laborers (BBS, 2002b: 28). Their wages are low and employment is also not regular because of the seasonal character of agriculture. Proportion of population below the officially acknowledged “extremepoverty” level (income below $1/day) in Bangladesh is 29 percent (World Bank 2003: 236). According to BBS data, average agriculture wage rate in rural Bangladesh has been below the “one $ line” for a long period (see Figure 3 and Appendix 6). Average wage rate in the coastal zone is relatively higher than the country average. Within the coastal zone, agriculture wage rate is high in Chittagong and Noakhali. In other districts, wages are lower than the country average.

Data on industrial wage rates are available for the major cities. In the coastal zone, Khulna and Chittagong are the two major urban/industrial centers. Industrial wage rate for jogali (unskilled laborer) in Khulna is lower than the country average, while that of Chittagong is higher (see Table 3).
 

Table 3: Industrial wage rate for unskilled laborer

Food poverty
Extent of poverty in terms of calorie intake is relatively high in the coastal zone. In the coastal zone, 52 percent people are absolute poor and 25 percent are extreme poor. Corresponding figures for Bangladesh are 49 and 23 percent, respectively. Extreme poverty is very high in Lakshmipur, Chandpur and Bagerhat (above 30%), and relatively low in Patuakhali, Narail and Satkhira (below 15%).

Major livelihood groups
Land is considered a major determining factor of the socio-economic status of a rural household, though there are other factors that also contribute to defining a social class. Occupation and relations of production often characterize a social class. For example: a jailla (fisher) or a kamla badailla/kishen (day laborer/farm laborer as they are called in different parts of the coastal zone) is perceived as member of a distinct class with low status; a small farmer is called a chasha (owner cultivator) by the bhadrolok (gentry/absentee landlord); and a big landowner gives the image of a malik (proprietor/patron). Historically, small farmer is a transient class between the propertied (landowner) and the landless. Along with the process of land concentration and pauperization, the bulk of the rural landless crowds in city slums and turns to wage labor or to self-employment in a wide range of occupations, such as, garbage collection, peddling and rickshaw pulling, who are no better off than the wage laborers.

In rural areas, agriculture laborers comprise the largest livelihood group in terms of number. At least one in every three rural households lives on agriculture labor. The group with smallholdings closely follows them. Among the non-farmers (those whose principal occupation is not agriculture), fishers are the single largest group. In urban areas, the majority is poor and either sells labor in the formal and informal sectors or is engaged in a wide range of self-employment activities.

The coastal zone of Bangladesh is the habitat of about seven million households. The four broad
livelihood groups as mentioned above, together comprise 71 percent of the total coastal households. Their distribution is shown in Table 4.

Table 4: Distribution of major livelihood groups

Agriculture laborer
There are 1.81 million households in the coastal districts categorized as “agriculture labor households”, which is the largest livelihood group in the coastal zone in terms of number. An agriculture labor household refers to one “whose major source of income is obtained by working as agricultural laborer” (BBS, 1999). According to the 1996 agriculture census, agriculture labor is the predominant source of living for 33 percent of the rural households. This proportion is lower than outside the coastal zone (37%). The districts of Bhola, Satkhira, Khulna and Jessore have higher concentration of agriculture laborers than other districts, while the districts of Feni and Chittagong have lower concentrations. In the coastal zone, small, medium and large farmers are engaged in wage labor in higher proportions compared to the farmers outside the coastal zone.

Agriculture laborers are often mixed up as rural landless. According to estimates based on the 1996 agriculture census data, the majority of agriculture labor households (55%) are small farmers and some are even medium (2%) and large (0.02%) farmers. The rest of them (43%) consist of non-farm households, owning no or less than 0.05 acre of land.

Small farmers
Small farmers are the second largest group closely following the agriculture laborers. There are 1.79 million small farmer households in the coastal zone8, constituting 26.1 percent of the coastal households. Small farmers (including agriculture labor households possessing small farms) account for 58 percent of the total of rural households in the coastal zone, while they are 51% outside the coastal zone. The districts of Pirojpur, Barisal, Shariatpur, Chandpur, Feni, Lakshmipur and Noakhali have relatively high proportions of small farmers: more than 65%. In the past decades, many medium and large farmers have turned into small farmers because of the increasing population (consequent fragmentation of holding) and natural process of pauperization.

Agriculture census data shows that -- while the proportion of small farmers (and also non-farm households) had increased -- the proportion of medium and large farmers had sharply declined during the inter-census period from 1960 to 1996.

Fishers
According estimates based on the 1996 agriculture census data, the number of fisher (fish catching) households has been estimated at 0.53 million, forming eight percent of the coastal households. Among the rural farm households, they are, however, 14 percent. This proportion is much higher than outside the coastal zone where fisher households account for only 6 percent of total farm households.

Although the districts of Chittagong, Barisal and Noakhali have high concentrations of fisher households in terms of absolute numbers, in terms of percentages of households, the highest concentration is found in the district of Barguna (38%), followed by Khulna (29%), Jhalakati (26%) and Satkhira (22%). These are all sea facing districts. The districts of Gopalganj and Narail, which are not sea facing, have the lowest proportion of fishers (less than 5%). Though fishers are also farmers (in the sense of owning cultivable land), the majority of them are small farmers.10 Among the fishers, 80 percent are self-employed, nine percent are wage laborers and 11 percent are unpaid family helpers (BBS, 2002e: 112).

Urban poor
Reliable estimates of the population of the urban poor are not available. According to the Household Investment Survey 1998-99 of BBS (BBS, 2002a), 47 percent of the urban households are “poor”. The survey indicates that “day labor” is the primary occupation of 21 percent of the urban heads of households. Besides, there are many who are engaged as “contractual wage laborers”, mostly in the formal sector. Assuming 50 percent of the urban households as “poor”, their number is estimated at 0.7 million.

Industrial workers are mostly concentrated in metropolitan areas of Chittagong and Khulna. Besides, many are engaged in the informal sector. Many poor people are engaged as transport workers, restaurant workers or domestic servants. There is lack of data on occupational distribution of urban population in BBS literature or any other macro studies. The situation of the poor is precarious. There is job-uncertainty, wages are low and working days are long.

Source : COASTAL LIVELIHOODS : situation and context, Working Paper, Program Development Office for Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan (PDO-ICZMP).