Aisha had escaped poverty in rural Bangladesh through skills training and livelihoods support. However, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns shuttered her husband’s barbershop for extended periods, driving the family into poverty as they were forced to rely on her small livestock business. Although the Government provided some support, medical treatment costs forced the family to drain their savings and sell assets.

The story of Aisha: A transitory escape from poverty in rural Bangladesh

Source: Chronic Poverty Advisory Network interview from late 2021.

Aisha’s story is, unfortunately, far from an exception in many low- and middle-income countries. The COVID-19 pandemic was just one among multiple recent global crises – ranging from food, fuel and financial crises, to climate-related disasters and violent conflict. In 2024, global extreme poverty rate, defined as living on less than USD $2.15 per person per day, was 9.8% for females compared to 9.1% for males. The need for universal, gender-responsive social protection systems is urgent in this context.

To inform UN Women’s report, World Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2024, an analysis was undertaken to understand the relationship between gender, poverty dynamics and social protection amid crises in rural Bangladesh, Peru and Tanzania. The findings have been published as a discussion paper.

Households escaping poverty remain vulnerable to falling back in

Across all three countries, a significant proportion of households experience ‘transient poverty’ - either moving in and out of poverty regularly, or risk falling back in:

• In rural Bangladesh the share was 16% (against a USD $1.90/day poverty line)

• In Peru 33% of households were in transient poverty (based on a national poverty line of about US$3.47/day)
• In Tanzania, the share rose to 50% (using a relative poverty measure of the bottom two wealth brackets, or ‘quintiles’, covering the poorest 40% of the population).

Significantly, many households considered ‘never poor’ at their national poverty thresholds end up reclassified into transient or chronic poverty, when measured under more stringent global benchmarks. For example, if national poverty thresholds were increased by 50%, around half of the ‘never-poor’ population in rural Bangladesh, Peru and Tanzania would be classified as chronically poor or transient poor. These proportions are even higher when the reference poverty lines are doubled.

These findings point to considerable underlying and often chronic risk and vulnerability across the three countries.

Poverty trajectories in rural Bangladesh (2011–2019), Peru (2017–2021) and Tanzania (2008–2019) at different poverty lines  

Note: The international poverty line (IPL) refers to trajectories constructed using the earlier international USD $1.90/day poverty line, versus the national poverty line (NPL), and the relative poverty line (RPL) comprising the bottom two quintiles. Source: Analysis of Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (2011–2019), Encuesta Nacional de Hogares (ENAHO) (2017–2021) and National Panel Survey (2008–2019) data sets.

Social protection coverage remains inadequate

Yet, in spite of this chronic risk and vulnerability, social protection coverage remains low. The COVID-19 pandemic did spur a surge in social protection responses and gender-sensitive measures to tackle the cost of living crisis. But low coverage and value meant that few households were able to benefit from them and emerge resilient from such shocks. Perhaps as a result, households more often relied on support from friends and family than government assistance in times of crisis, but these sources of informal support may dry up when entire communities are affected by crises.

Five ways to forge pathways out of poverty

1. Strengthen social protection programmes. International agencies and national actors must step up to improve social protection coverage, adequacy and inclusiveness to help tackle chronic poverty and prevent downward income mobility.
2. Make social services affordable: Pro-poor provision of social services can eliminate the need for households to rely on one form of financial support (such as onSavings and Credit Cooperative Societies in Tanzania) to offset the costs of an entitlement (e.g. school access, often through paying for ‘user costs’ even when education is free).
3. Increase women’s resources and agency: Broader social and economic support is needed for households in and near poverty, and women within them. In the face of shocks, women’s resources (e.g., education levels, ownership of phones or financial accounts) and agency within and outside of the household (e.g., right to sell land, comfort in speaking up on public needs) are critical to household resilience.
4. Focus on assets and livelihoods support: Supporting these drivers would require measures that increase women’s asset ownership and land tenure rights, alongside efforts to prevent reversals in these rights during crises. Diversified livelihood support and skills-building interventions for women like Aisha could also help (re)build their assets and income before, during and after crises.
5. Increase inclusion and responsiveness: The responsiveness of programmes through such ‘social protection plus’ programming needs to be improved. This requires considering the ways women’s resilience can be built before crises can be built before crises by, for example, improving their access to financial services, facilitating the redistribution of care work and supporting women’s and girls’ empowerment and economic recovery after crises.

Taken together, these measures have the potential to more create more equitable and sustained pathways to zero poverty during times of crises.