It is crucial now to focus on developing expansive social safety nets that will be able to cover a majority of the current population suffering from poverty
Although Covid-19 has affected the lives and livelihoods of nearly all sections of society, those living in and on the brink of poverty have, no doubt, been hit disproportionately hard.
To an extent, this has undone the colossal poverty alleviation work that Bangladesh managed to do over the past two decades, having brought poverty down from 48.9% in 2000 to 20.5% in 2019. Those who have newly slipped into poverty during this pandemic, termed the “new poor,” constitute almost 15% of the population as of last March.
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