Socioeconomic Profile of Households of Haor Region of Bangladesh: A Study on Micro-Credit Perspective

Abstract

The study aims to explore the socioeconomic charcateristics of housholds of Haor people of Bangladesh from micro-credit perspectives to fit the appropriate micro-credit program for the backward people in the area. With this pupose, field–level solid data has been gathered with a semi-structured questionnaire from 2340 households. The respondents have been divided into two types vice, borrowers and non-borrowers for comparison between them. And in this study 1560 micro-credit borrowers and 780 non-borrowers from 30 clusters of Haor region, lagging region of Bangladesh haven been used as sample. The study made 30 KII and 30 IDI for cross check the survey data. Both descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used in analysing the data. The study found that the socioneconomoc status of surveyed people is below the over-all national and rural levels. The study showed that, the dependency ratio of borrowers is greater than non-borrowers significantly but in terms of pucca building sanitation facilities borrowers’ position is better than non-borrowers significantly. There is no significant difference between borrowers’ and non-borrowers’ in terms of land holdings. Possession productive assests is about same of both borrowers’ and non-borrowers’ but in case of durable assets’ possession there is significant difference beteen them. In respect of micro-credits 95% households has knowledge on micro-credits while 85.8% tried to get that benefits. In the first attempt 59.2% borrowed from formal sources, 18.4% from informal sources and 8.2% from both. The reaons from not getting micro-credit are- credit misappropriation and unfairness, non-cooperation of local authority, bureuacracy and budget limitation, ignorance and corruption in credit approval.