Investing in Early Years: How can Bangladesh realize the full potential of its social protection system?

This page in:
The early years are known as a window of opportunity for human growth and development and sets the stage for lifelong human capital formation. The early years are known as a window of opportunity for human growth and development and sets the stage for lifelong human capital formation.

Investing in in early childhood development is one of the most critical investments a country can make to break the cycle of poverty.  The early years are known as a window of opportunity for human growth and development and sets the stage for lifelong human capital formation. Ensuring adequate nutrition and cognitive development during children’s early years can maximize a child’s intelligence, health, learning, and productivity, as well as emotional and social wellbeing. Despite Bangladesh’s success in improving development outcomes and reducing child mortality, health and learning outcomes for children remain a challenge. Bangladesh accounts for four percent of stunted children globally which has a major impact on learning outcomes. Poorer households bear a disproportionate share of the burden  of stunting and have limited access to early childhood development interventions, perpetuating the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Social protection programs can help in channeling critical investments for young children in poor and vulnerable households. The National Social Security Strategy  lays out a vision for a comprehensive child benefit program to support improved infant and maternal wellbeing. While there are a number of government programs which focus on the nutrition and cognitive wellbeing of children, there is further scope to improve the planning, design and delivery of these programs.

What are the challenges?

In Bangladesh, child-focused programs account for only about two percent of the total social protection budget in 2020-2021. Appropriate resource allocation in line with national priorities is critical to realize returns from investing in early childhood development.  While the Maternity Allowance Program for the Poor (MAPP) focuses on poor women in rural areas and Allowances for Urban Lactating Mothers (AULM) focuses on working women in urban areas and both programs have increased three-fold between 2016-2020 but resource allocation still falls far below what is required to take programs to full scale.

Ensuring the right people are benefited, and benefit levels are adequate, also is key to the investment of these programs. A recent World Bank review on the Efficiency of Social Protection Expenditure on Early Years suggests that about 50 percent of eligible households in rural areas and over 60 percent in urban areas are left out of coverage.  As a result, many children living in poor and vulnerable households are missing out on interventions that could shape a better future for them.  Although the current monthly benefits (BDT 800) provided by the maternal and child allowances are higher than many other social protection programs, these are still quite low to have any significant impact. For instance, the Public Expenditure Review finds that transfers under the largest seven social protection programs are on average equal to only about three percent of total income of a poor or extremely poor person. Any shock or inflation and increase in food prices can further reduce the real value of these benefits.

Finally, the method of payment is a critical part in the overall delivery system. For cash transfers, the government-to-person (G2P) payments platform has been able to minimize transfer processing time, but there remains scope to strengthen payment provider services and build awareness for beneficiaries.

Appropriate resource allocation in line with national priorities is critical to realize returns from investing in early childhood development in Bangladesh.
Appropriate resource allocation in line with national priorities is critical to realize returns from investing in early childhood development. Photo courtesy: World Bank

 

Pathway to Early Childhood Investment

Several approaches can be taken for effectively improving and maximizing the impact of early years’ programs:

By addressing some of these core issues in its social protection programs targeted for early years, Bangladesh can continue to make further gains in human capital and help to bring more children from poor and vulnerable families to realize their full potential. To learn more, read the policy note “Efficiency of Planning, Programming, and Delivery of Social Protection Programs in Early Years.


Authors

Mostafa Amir Sabbih

Social Protection Specialist

Aneeka Rahman

Senior Social Protection Economist

Join the Conversation

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly
Remaining characters: 1000