Outlining important policy requirements for Bangladesh to become an upper middle-income country, the book presents research work conducted during the project “Changing Labor Markets in Bangladesh: Understanding Dynamics in Relation to Economic Growth and Poverty,” sponsored by the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada. Bangladesh has experienced remarkable economic growth rates over the last decade. The country has recently been upgraded from a low-income country (LIC) to a lower-middle-income country (LMIC) as per the World Bank’s classification system. By 2024, the country also aspires to graduate from the United Nation’s list of least developed countries (LDC). The 7th five-year plan sets an ambitious target of 8 percent growth in GDP by 2020. There are also steep development targets to be achieved under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. All these will require an enormous leap forward from the current level of economic growth rate and sustaining it in the future. The situation also calls for considerable structural change in the economy, facilitating large-scale economic diversification. Rapid expansion of labor-intensive and high-productivity sectors, both in the farm and nonfarm sectors, is thus crucial for Bangladesh. Further, this should take place in conjunction with interventions to enhance productivity, jobs and incomes in traditional and informal activities where there are large pools of surplus labor. Given its relevance for Bangladesh and applicability to many other developing countries, the book offers a unique and pioneering resource for researchers, industry watchers as well as policy makers.

This book examines the theory and global evidence on structural transformation along with stylised facts and implications using, among others, a dynamic panel model, for South Asia. The characteristics of the structural transformation process in Bangladesh bring out the relevance of a comprehensive and inclusive South Asian ‘brand’ in view of the challenges of large population size, high burden of poverty, rising inequalities and its compulsion to achieve rapid and sustained inclusive development. The analysis highlights several distinct characteristics of Bangladesh’s structural transformation including changes in value added, trade, employment, productivity, formal-informal jobs, and opportunities for low-skilled workers. The book suggests that the manufacturing sector could not create the required number of jobs and generate rapid absolute and relative productivity gains in the Bangladesh economy. Although the services sector has largely led output and employment growth, services subsectors with strong labour absorptive capacity have low average productivity. Hence, growth-enhancing structural transformation led by these subsectors is likely to be less dynamic than required for rapid employment-creating growth in the economy. The book’s analysis on COVID-19 and cyclone Amphan shows that an integrated disaster and development paradigm is needed for Bangladesh. An inclusive and health and well-being focused structural transformation presents the pathway to advance the people-centred approach to development in Bangladesh through both vulnerability reduction and investments in sustainable development that would offset both known and unknown disaster threats. The key for Bangladesh is to skillfully manage the ‘developer’s dilemma’ of achieving both structural transformation in terms of large productivity gains and inclusive growth for reducing poverty and rising inequalities. This book is relevant to students, academicians and development practitioners and others interested in contemporary development.

This book offers a novel approach to the role of institutions in development and applies it to Bangladesh with special attention to historical context and the political economy. It will interest development professionals in international and bilateral development agencies, policy-makers in developing countries; academics and graduate students.

The economic and social development that Bangladesh has achieved in the past two decades has made Bangladesh a development paradox. This book tries to explain this paradox through a political economy lens. The book explains the linkages between the state, changing society and emerging private sector, and examines whether the social transformation taking place in Bangladesh has the potential to live up to the expectations of a middle- income country. The early part of the book unravels the myriad relations between the state, society and market to project the aspirations of a newly independent nation. It analyzes how political turmoil, militarization of politics, politicization of institutions, reforms initiatives, industrial and social development policies, and the power nexus influenced the nature of the political economy of Bangladesh. The book goes on to examine how domestic appetite for capital and raw materials, the digital revolution, and the capacity of the local market to absorb expanded economic activities have created an environment that catalyzes innovation and entrepreneurship. The book also explains how the country has attempted to transform from an agrarian to a manufacturing- based economy, with rapid growth in the ready- made garment industry, pisciculture, pharmaceuticals and the ICT sector. Bangladesh’s journey from an emerging economy towards a developed country would interest those researching on development economics and those in policy making.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Developing countries seek economic development which is broad-based or inclusive in the sense that it raises the income of all, especially the poor. Yet this is at odds with Simon Kuznets' hypothesis that economic development tends to put upward pressure on income inequality, at least initially and in the absence of countervailing policies. The Developer's Dilemma explores this 'Kuznetsian tension' between structural transformation and income inequality. The book asks: what are the varieties of structural transformation that have been experienced in developing countries? What inequality dynamics are associated with each variety of structural transformation? And what policies have been utilized to manage trade-offs between structural transformation, income inequality, and inclusive growth? Across nine country cases written by academics across the Global South, this book answers these questions using a comparative case study approach with a common analytical framework and a set of common datasets. The intended intellectual contribution of the book is to provide a comparative analysis of the relationship between structural transformation, income inequality, and inclusive growth; to do so empirically at a regional and national level, and to draw conclusions about the varieties of structural transformation, their inequality dynamics, and the policies that have been employed to mediate the developer's dilemma.

Over the last two decades, Bangladesh has made progress in women's participation in the labor force, gender parity in primary education, and women's political representation. Areas of concern include the high prevalence of violence against women, obstacles to women's access to resources and assets, unequal terms of their labor engagement, and impact of their overwhelming responsibility for care work. The Government of Bangladesh has made policy commitments toward gender equality and established an institutional framework to fulfill these. This publication intends to support the government in its attempt to address persisting gender inequalities and gaps through a multisector approach across policies, programs, and projects. It provides insights into gender issues in urban; transport; energy; and skills, vocational, and tertiary education, and gives suggestions for strengthening gender mainstreaming in projects.