Bangladesh advances in human capital development

The World Bank’s human capital index 2018 gives an encouraging picture of Bangladesh, placing the country ahead of India and Pakistan when it comes to building up the future generation.

The World Bank report has taken certain indicators into consideration, including the mortality rate for children under five, the number of years of a child’s schooling, quality of education, the proportion of adults surviving until the age of 60, proper growth of children, and so on.

With proper education and health facilities, a child can grow into an adult and display full productivity. According to the World Bank report, Bangladesh’s children have 48 per cent productivity potential. That means they have a 52 per cent shortcoming in productivity.

UNDP’s September report on human resource development placed Bangladesh three steps ahead, standing at 136 among 189 countries. In this case too, Bangladesh is ahead of Pakistan. In both reports, Sri Lanka tops the list of South Asian countries. This has been possible due to the education and health care standards in that country.

A member of the planning commission told Prothom Alo that the Bangladesh government too has been placing importance on human resources development for the past decade. He said that 3 to 4 per cent of the GDP will be channelled towards the education sector and 2 per cent to health. However, countries which have seen rapid development invest much more in these sectors. We need to do so too. And close monitoring of how these allocations are used is also imperative. Finance minister Abdul Abdul Muhit once said if corruption can be lessened, economic growth can go up by 2 per cent.

The Bengali Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen has high praise for Bangladesh’s economy and is effusive about the country’s development in women’s education. Bangladesh has also been relatively successful in reducing the infant mortality rate, but has a high rate of school dropouts. This must be brought down to nil. While there has been economic development, very few actually benefit from it. The decrease in poverty is slow.

The World Bank report revealed that while child mortality rate has decreased, children are not being given adequate nutrition. Many of them have stunted growth. Sri Lanka has long been ahead in human capital development, but this time Nepal has done well too, jumping up to 102 on the index. Their child productivity rate is 49 per cent, one per cent higher than ours.  

While Bangladesh may be faring well among South Asian countries, it is lagging far behind other countries of the world. In Asia, Singapore’s child productivity rate is 88 per cent. South Korea and Japan come up second and third in this regard respectively.

In Bangladesh, people’s average longevity and earnings have increased and we have done relatively well in education and health. But that is not enough. There is still a long way to go. Along with education and health, if investment and employment could be increased, we could complete with development countries in human capital development too.