Regional Inequality in Bangladesh in the 2000s: Re-Visiting the East-West Divide Debate

The term “East-West divide” as a way of describing regional disparity in Bangladesh has emerged in the policy discourse only in the 2000s. The administrative divisions belonging to the western part of the country are traditionally considered to be economically backward than the areas located in the eastern part of the country. This has been partly supported by the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) data. The successive HIES rounds since 1983/84 showed the welfare level to be higher in the East than in the West, as measured by the level of per capita consumption expenditure. Large spatial poverty differentials between the eastern and western regions have also been recorded by successive “poverty mapping” exercises starting from the late 1990s.