1. Introduction
Despite the opportunities for reducing extreme poverty that technological advances
have created, the number of poor people in developing countries has fallen only
slowly relative to the 1990-92 level, the established MDG baseline period (FAO
2006). Priority of the time is select innovative poverty reduction programmes that
help exit from poverty significantly. International communities have been giving
increasing emphasis to targeted schemes to mitigate poverty. Bangladesh has made
considerable progress in poverty but still it remains pervasive; almost half the
population is identified as poor (Kotikula et al. 2007, World Bank 2006). The
Bangladesh Poultry Model is an innovative capacity development programme through
multi-strategic approaches being adapted widely in a number of developing countries
such as Burkina Faso, Benin, Ghana, Eritrea, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania,
Zimbabwe, Kenya, Senegal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nicaragua with
donor support from DANIDA, EU, AsDB, IFAD, and the World Bank. Ad hoc
experimentation generated the basic dimensions of the model, and these were then
reinforced over two decades by research and learning-by-doing experiences with
supports from donors and GO-NGO partnership (Akter and Farrington 2007).
Household Income and Expenditure Survey data shows that livestock ownership in
Bangladesh increased from 32.5% in 2000 to 40.3% in 2005 in Bangladesh and it is
higher than average (42.5%) in the bottom 3 deciles (Serajuddin, Zaman and Narayan
2007). Impact studies identified the programme successful in terms of gender
mainstreaming and empowerment, higher income, consumption and nutrition; but
independent review expressed the view that the results from the weak impact studies
should be used with a high degree of caution (Islam and Jabber 2005). Even if the
assessment is plausible the following issues are pertinent to poverty reduction.
Firstly, are participants able to raise income or opportunities adequately to quit
poverty? It is important to identify strategies leading them out of poverty along with
challenges to incorporate in the capacity development programmes.
Secondly, participants are targeted women from poor households. This does not mean
they are homogeneous in terms of livelihood diversities. Other livelihoods are
external to the model, may be either competitive or complementary to the activities
supported by the model. There is a possibility that some of the participants are
successfully combining the opportunities generated by the model with exogenous
opportunities and moving out of poverty, while the others either have no other
opportunities or are failures. It is important to identify such heterogeneities.
Third, it is important to identify how pro-poor initiatives to strengthen common
enterprises like poultry keeping in pathways out of poverty could be improved.
The paper addresses these issues and is organised as follows. Following the
introduction, section 2 discusses methodology and data, section 3 presents poverty
transitions, section 4 explains livelihood strategies and impact on household welfare.
The paper concludes in section 6.