Bangladesh

The World Bank reports that poverty reduction slowed as job creation weakened and inflation rose, while Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and UN Women work has highlighted the large unpaid domestic and care burden carried by women. For a family supporting several people, access to ordinary life still depends heavily on sustained paid work plus unpaid household labour.

ADB describes a large affordable-housing deficit as rapid urbanization pushes people into informal settlements, while the World Bank notes that formal mortgage finance is difficult to obtain and that land and housing costs remain major barriers for lower-income households.

WFP estimates about 16 million people face acute food insecurity and 1.6 million young children are acutely malnourished. The Government is relaunching national school feeding with WFP support, aiming to reach roughly 3 million children over three years, creating a real zero-money food route but not universal free nourishment.

UNICEF reports that safely managed drinking-water coverage fell to 39.3% in MICS 2025 because bacteriological and chemical contamination remain serious concerns. Bangladesh has made major progress against open defecation, but safe water and sanitation quality still vary sharply by place and infrastructure.

Bangladesh achieved very broad electricity access, including extensive off-grid solar deployment, but the World Bank B-READY 2025 utility profile reports an average of 26 power outages in a typical month and a new 60 kVA connection cost equal to 17% of GNI per capita. Connection is therefore not the same as dependable household capability.

WHO reports a UHC service coverage index of only 54 out of 100 and says 41.7% of the population experienced financial hardship from out-of-pocket health expenditure in 2025. WHO also notes that medicines account for about 64% of health spending, leaving care strongly tied to household cash.

Bangladesh law and the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education require free primary education, while MICS 2025 shows only 18.9% of school-attending people aged 5–24 received school-related social transfers. UNICEF continues to report major barriers for disadvantaged and out-of-school children.

Dhaka Metro and bus systems provide growing transport capacity, but travel remains fare-based and the World Bank has long identified severe road congestion and high urban transport friction as major constraints on livability. Current fare schedules confirm that ordinary movement still depends on repeated payment.

MICS 2025 reports that 47.2% of women aged 20–24 were married before age 18, while the adolescent birth rate rose to 92 births per 1,000 girls aged 15–19. These pressures combine with housing, food and care costs rather than reflecting an environment where families can form and flourish with low friction.

World Bank housing analysis identifies very high land prices and weak land administration as major causes of unaffordable urban housing, while Bangladesh is still developing stronger tenure-rights measurement and digital land-management systems. Physical land exists, but secure usable space is not broadly reachable outside purchase, inheritance or finance.

The Department of Public Libraries reports a nationwide network including 71 government libraries receiving new books and e-book services in 2024–25. Some museums and public park events offer free entry, but Dhaka still has limited open space and many cultural or recreational routes remain episodic or paid.

The World Bank describes Bangladesh as a leader in climate adaptation and disaster preparedness and reports projects that improved about 255,000 hectares of forest and supported 2.4 million forest-dependent people. At the same time, flood, heat, salinity and air-pollution risks remain among the world’s most severe.

The World Justice Project ranked Bangladesh 125th of 143 countries in its 2025 Rule of Law Index. Bangladesh launched a Digital Legal Aid Project and reforms intended to make justice more accessible, but corruption, case backlogs and uneven access remain substantial barriers.

UNDP reports Bangladesh produces more than 800,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year, much of it entering rivers and seas. New circularity projects aim to collect and recycle 15,000 tonnes and strengthen waste-worker livelihoods, but these remain small relative to national plastic and textile waste flows.