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Poverty reduction program improves subjective wellbeing, parental care, food insecurity, and domestic violence in rural Bangladesh
Author(s) -
Jalal Chowdhury SB,
Frongillo Edward A
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.22.1_supplement.871.1
Subject(s) - poverty , domestic violence , environmental health , food insecurity , supplemental nutrition assistance program , poverty threshold , socioeconomics , food security , affect (linguistics) , psychology , medicine , poison control , human factors and ergonomics , economic growth , geography , economics , agriculture , communication , archaeology
Programs aimed at economic development may impact other important outcomes that are seldom evaluated. Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction/Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR/TUP), a program implemented by Building Resources Across Communities (BRAC), has been successful in significantly alleviating extreme poverty in rural Bangladesh. We hypothesized that the program also improved participants’ subjective wellbeing and parental behavior toward young children, and decreased food insecurity and domestic violence. Cross‐sectional data were collected from a random sample of 1616 (638 program and 978 control) households across 126 villages under 37 BRAC Area Offices of 3 districts. Multilevel models were used for analysis to control for potential confounders. Program households were significantly better than the control households in subjective wellbeing (p <0.01) and non‐coercive child discipline (p <0.04), and lower in food insecurity (p <0.01) and domestic violence (p <0.02). The results suggest that the poverty reduction program impacts outcomes at least partially through improved household economy. Further improvement may be achieved by addition of program components that may affect these important outcomes directly. Supported by Research and Evaluation Division, BRAC.