Poverty during Covid-19 in Bangladesh: Response, Resilience and Way Forward

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has proved itself to be one of the
most vital challenges to overall development both locally and
globally. The worldwide crisis has drastically worsened global
poverty with the number of additional poor reaching up to 100
million by 2020. For developing countries like Bangladesh,
economic stagnation has pushed a large population back
into poverty. The country’s national poverty rate rose to 29.5
percent in the first couple of months after the first case was
detected. Using secondary literature _ mostly newspapers,
online data sources and journal articles, the study portrays
the new dimension of poverty during the pandemic. It also
highlights responses from people and policies employed by
the government to tackle the loss. Though the government
has taken a number of initiatives to stabilize the economy,
the results are yet to show impact. Considering the present
findings, it is essential to implement the national development
strategies initiated already, and introduce time-oriented
policies to help manage the pandemic as well as meet the goal
of eradicating poverty in all its forms by 2030.