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The Mahabub Hossain Panel Data (MHPD) was initiated in 1988 and maintained by and named after the late Dr. Mahabub Hossain, a well-known agricultural and development economist who led a number of reputed organizations in Bangladesh (Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies and BRAC) and in the region (International Rice Research Institute). This background report portrays the historical context, sampling evolution, survey structure and methodology, and academic and policy contributions of the MHPD with some lessons learned for the next step forward. The MHPD has tracked rural households for a period of over three decades (1988-2014) with five waves of household surveys covering over 2,800 households and has collected a wide range of information on household composition, schooling of household members, assets, cropping intensity and patterns including cost and return, employment and income, consumption, participation in different government and nongovernment programs. To produce this document, we reviewed several books and journal articles authored by Mahabub Hossain and related academic papers and documents and collated information on MHPD, including (i) mapping out information on past and ongoing panel or cross-sectional household survey data series in Bangladesh; (ii) undertaking the review of all past rounds of MHPD survey documents, such as survey implementation plans, questionnaires, codebooks, databases, and processed data; (iii) consulting relevant stakeholders, including the past implementers of the surveys and the users of the data as needed to validate documented information; (iv) taking stock of the contribution of MHPD to academic literature and policy development; and (v) drawing a number of lessons learned for future data collection and policy making. The report aims to i) serve as a comprehensive reference document for scholars and policymakers who wish to understand MHPD for possible use in their research; ii) provide a comprehensive baseline from which we can consider ways to enhance MHPD further to continue contributing to understanding the economic and social issues of today and near future. By compiling all associated research work based on MHPD, the report also offers a historical landscape of Bangladesh's social and economic development and a credible explanation for the Bangladesh development model for global comparison.

Improving productivity among microenterprises is important, especially in low-income countries where market imperfections are pervasive, and resources are scarce. Relaxing credit constraints can increase the productivity of microenterprises. Using a field experiment involving agricultural microenterprises in Bangladesh, we estimated the impact of access to credit on the overall productivity of rice farmers and disentangled the total effect into technological change (frontier shift) and technical efficiency changes. We found that relative to the baseline rice output per decimal, access to credit resulted in, on average, approximately a 14 percent increase in yield, holding all other inputs constant. After decomposing the total effect into the frontier shift and efficiency improvement, we found that, on average, around 11 percent of the increase in output came from changes in technology, or frontier shift, while the remaining 3 percent was attributed to improvements in technical efficiency. The efficiency gain was higher for modern hybrid rice varieties, and almost zero for traditional rice varieties. Within the treatment group, the effect was greater among pure tenant and mixed-tenant microenterprise households compared with microenterprises that only cultivated their own land.

Following marginality approach developed at ZEF, Bonn we identified five marginal sub-districts in Bangladesh i.e. underperforming areas since in such areas yield gaps (potential minus actual yields) are high and productivity gains (of main staple crops) are likely to be achieved. Then we conducted qualitative and quantitative sample survey of 313 poor Smallholders and used livelihood assets and need assessment, Principal component analysis (PCA), logit regression model and cluster analysis to draw the conclusion. Results suggest that only cereal based growth productivity program could not improve food and livelihood security of the poor SHs in the study areas and thus we find that intensive crop system, hybrid seeds, water management technologies, non-crop farming, non-farm enterprise/business, etc. are the suggested potential technology innovations. However, there is very limited availability of extension services among the poor SHs in the study areas and thus despite being poor, the poor SHs have high willingness to pay for extension services, say, awareness and motivation building for increasing agricultural intensification, knowledge service for crop related agricultural production and agriculture related business. Regression results show that household head education, length of the permanent residency in the locality, land ownership, farm size, availability of seeds, having fair price, geographical locations are important determinants for willingness to pay for agricultural extension services. We finally suggest that creating an agricultural technology cum business promoter at the village level address the generalized barriers for the poor SHs for adopting those technology innovations, that is, low level of motivation for the poor SHs, lack of appropriate information, technical knowledge and extension/rural business services/networking, lack of credit and liquid money, etc.

Poor financial environment of rural developing economy leads to underinvestment and inefficiency of marginal and small-scale farm households. Development interventions for providing improved market access and credit at subsidized interest rate to small farm households are therefore considered as the preconditions in the transformation process of rural agrarian economy. Hence, the question of whether access to resources influences farm households’ production decisions, performance and efficiency is very important. In this paper, we attempt to estimate the impact of a subsidized credit on farm output and efficiency of small and marginal rice farmers of Bangladesh. Using survey data of a field experimental study, we show that relaxing the credit constraint has significant positive impact on farm output and efficiency. On an average, small-scale rice farms with access to subsidized credit are found to be 13% more efficient than farms with no credit access. The increase is 76% on average when we use the randomized access to credit as instrument for farm credit. We also examine the impact heterogeneity of access to credit by rice variety. We find that cultivation of modern Hybrid rice variety is significantly higher (on average 17%) for treatment farm households compare to the control group. However, we do not find much evidence of heterogeneous productivity impact of access to credit by HYV vs. Hybrid rice. Combining the results, we conclude that access to credit is effective in improving the overall output and efficiency of marginal and small-scale rice farm households. Thus, policies enhancing the credit access of marginal farmers are important for sustainable agricultural development of rural developing economy.

This paper attempts to reveal the effectiveness of the package of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions with the school students’ network “student brigades” in terms of their impacts on water and sanitation (or WATSAN) behavior of household members both in household and farm level and on their health and productivity outcomes. We conduct Randomized Control Trial (RCT) with students’ brigades in six WATSAN hotspots (sub-districts) of Bangladesh in several phases: a water quality census, baseline survey, treatment implementation at treatment areas and end line survey. Our treatment consists of three actions: informing the households about the prior water testing results, delivering hygiene messages through a poster and equipping the student brigades with water testing toolkits and letting them test water at different points and communicate the results back to their households. Impression from the implemented treatments indicates that the suggested intervention package can be an effective strategy to motivate households and communities, particularly by using school students as the agents of change.

Although Bangladesh made some remarkable achievements in reducing poverty and in improving social and economic outcomes in recent decades, about one-third of the rural population still lives below the upper poverty line most of whom depend on agriculture as their primary source of income. One of the reasons for their poverty is the low productivity that results from sub-optimal use of inputs and other technology. To foster agricultural productivity and rural growth, technology innovations have to reach all strata of the poor among small farming communities in rural Bangladesh. For that purpose, technology opportunities need to be brought together with systematic and location-specific actions related to technology needs, agricultural systems, ecological resources and poverty characteristics to overcome the barriers that economic, social, ecological and cultural conditions can create. The first step towards this is to identify underperforming areas, i.e. rural areas in which the prevalence of poverty and other dimensions of marginality are high and agricultural potential is also high since in such areas yield gaps (potential minus actual yields) are high and productivity gains (of main staple crops) are likely to be achieved. The marginality mapping presented in this paper has attempted to identify areas with high prevalence of societal and spatial marginality-– based on proxies for marginality dimensions representing different spheres of life-–and high (un/der utilized) agricultural (cereal) potentials. The overlap between the marginality hotspots and the high (un/der utilized) agricultural potentials shows that Rajibpur (Kurigram), Dowarabazar (Sunamgonj), Porsha (Naogaon), Damurhuda (Chuadanga), Hizla (Barisal), Mehendigonj (Barisal), Bauphal (Patuakhali) and Bhandaria (Pirojpur) are the marginal areas where most productivity gains could be achieved.

Bangladesh has made substantial progress in primary education in recent decades mainly due to the supply side interventions. Using the nationally representative longitudinal survey of rural households in Bangladesh conducted in three waves in 1988, 2000, and 2008, this paper examines the changing pattern of educational participation of children and socio-economic factors in addition to the school factors in order to better address the issue of dropout and exclusion. The findings show that school participation increased and gender parity was achieved over time and still 6-8% children are left out from schooling mainly from household with disable children, ultra-poor households, and those where both parents are illiterate. The study observes lack of demand for schooling among those socio-economically disadvantaged population groups and turn attention for a targeted approach to include the children who continue to be out of schools. Finally, the study suggests for economic incentives for those population groups and quality improvement in the curriculum so that secondary education becomes more useful to high-school dropouts.

The study aims at estimating comprehensive effects of non-farm employments (NFEs) on poverty based on an intensive field survey conducted in 2008 on about 175 small landholding households in developed four villages of Comilla Sadar Upazila. We analyze participating factors of small household workers in NFEs and their effects on household production (farming and non-farm activities) and consumption (both food and non-food). For estimating consumption effects (poverty), we focus on food adequacy, income poverty and education poverty (as a part of human poverty). At each level of estimation, we depend on appropriate econometric regressions. Results find the significant positive role of overall NFEs on household NFAs rather faming. Remittance incomes do not contribute in household production either farming or non-farm activities and food adequacy; and thus, these must be spent on non-food consumption. Education-poverty levels are worse than income poverty levels among small households. The increasing NFI is reducing some income poverty, but it is yet to realize in achieving household education; however, access to formal sector employments by the small household workers is significantly reducing education poverty. Therefore, qualitative diversification of the poor household workers and productive use of household remittance incomes deserve special attention.