A tale of triple disadvantages: Disability, chronic poverty and gender inequality in rural Bangladesh

Abstract

This study focuses on the interaction between disability, chronic poverty and gender in rural Bangladesh, relying on analysis of the Chronic Poverty and Long Term Impact Study conducted between 1997 and 2010. A series of logistic regressions investigate the relationship between disabilities and chronic poverty among women with their employment, education, assistance and household coping strategies. The results indicate that primary schooling is lower among girls compared with boys in chronically poor households, with implications for the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Even where the probability of employment for chronically poor women with disabilities is positive, these women are potentially unlikely to be engaged in work that safeguards their rights or contributes to poverty escapes. Moreover, in the face of shocks, poverty becomes stickier, in the absence of effectively targeted safety nets coupled with adverse coping strategies that prolong poverty. The article concludes with a call for ensuring that intersectionality is more firmly embedded into existing social protection programmes.