Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Social capital as a coping mechanism for seasonal deprivation: the case of the Monga in Bangladesh

  • Published:
Empirical Economics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The extreme hunger and deprivation that recurs every year in the lean season in northern Bangladesh, locally known as the Monga, is mainly due to the malfunctioning local labor and credit markets. Using data covering 5600 extreme poor households in the Monga-prone region, we investigate in detail the role of social capital in securing employment and obtaining informal loans. Correcting for the endogeneity of social capital by the heteroscedasticity-based method proposed by Klein and Vella (J Econom 154:154–164, 2010) and also by the standard IV method for a robustness check, we document that social capital plays an important role in obtaining both wage- and self-employment. We also document a weak negative effect of social capital on obtaining informal loans. We explain our results in terms of the role of horizontal and vertical components of our measures of social capital in influencing different outcomes.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Monga is a Bengali dialect word referring to unemployment, food scarcity, hunger and starvation in northern Bangladesh. Khandker (2011) describes the Monga as a period of virtual economic inactivity and seasonal food deprivation, which sometimes rises to the level of famine.

  2. In studying the 1974 famine in Bangladesh, Sen (1981) documented that, at the peak of the Monga, employment dropped to as low as 10% of the previous three-month average. Wage laborers and several service providers (such as boatmen and petty traders) whose livelihood depends on daily wages suffered the most. This resulted in a decline of “entitlement” of food, causing starvation and death. As much as 45% victims of the famine were day laborers, while small farmers (owning less than 0.5 acre of land) constituted a further 39%.

  3. Rangpur is one of the seven administrative divisions in Bangladesh (also a district in the same division).

    .

  4. See Rahman (1995), Hossain (1988), Faridi and Khalily (2008), Rahman et al. (2008), Shahriar and Khalily (2008), Khandker et al. (2010), Berg and Emran (2011), Khandker (2011). Rahman (1995) is the pioneering work on the Monga.

  5. This period is also termed as the Mora Kartik. Mora means “dead” in Bengali, and Kartik is a month in Bengali calendar (mid-October to mid-November). Mora Kartik implies the deadliness of the Kartik month.

  6. There is no clear agreement on the measurement of social capital. The literature commonly uses some proxies that track the individuals’ participation in community events. The following are some examples of the proxies for social capital: Kawachi (1999)—membership in groups, civic trust, and helpfulness of others; Islam et al. (2008)—voter turnout and crime rates; Veenstra (2000)—voting, writing letters to editors, paying attention to the community, and socialization with colleagues at work; Hyyppä and Mäki (2001)—different participating activities; Campbell et al. (2002)—members of the local sporting clubs; Latkin et al. (2003)—church attendance; Gayen and Raeside (2007)—networking and social relationships; Waterkeyn and Cairncross (2005)—club membership; Guiso et al. (2004)—blood donation.

    .

  7. The households were revisited in 2005 and 2008, but these panel data cannot be used to investigate the effect of social capital. The extreme poor were provided, among other assistance, support for building social capital for approximately two years. Therefore, the contribution of social capital cannot be disentangled from the program impact. Baseline data are immune to this problem.

  8. For a detailed discussion on the PWR method and the selection of households, see Matin and Halder (2007).

  9. Since data were collected in one round, consumption and income across seasons cannot be compared.

  10. We do not have disaggregated employment data, such as the number of hours a day and the number of days a month worked. It is important to note that respondents cannot recall such details of past employment. Therefore, we cannot distinguish full-time and part-time employment from the data. Information on location of employment is also not available, so we are unable to determine migration patterns during the Monga. However, the poor in our sample region hardly migrate, considering the associated uncertainty of finding a job in the new destination and the economic consequences of borrowing and spending money to travel to the destination (Bryan et al. 2014).

  11. At the 2002 exchange rate, one US dollar was approximately equal to 60 Taka.

  12. This method has also been employed by Berg et al. (2013).

  13. For example, higher land ownership and education would increase both information flow through social interactions (labor market information from a school friend, for example) and bargaining power [as Sen (1999) notes in Development as Freedom, an educated person is “taken seriously” in social interactions].

  14. We thank an anonymous referee for this suggestion.

  15. Inequality in social capital among households might also arise in the event of an aggregate shock at the village level even households are identical in terms of other resources, such as land and human capital.

    .

  16. We thank an Associate Editor of this journal for this explanation.

References

  • Amin S, Rai AS, Topa G (2003) Does microcredit reach the poor and vulnerable? Evidence from northern Bangladesh. J Dev Econ 70:59–82

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bakshi RK, Mallick D, Ulubaşoğlu M (2015) Social capital and hygiene practices among the extreme poor in rural Bangladesh. J Dev Stud 51:1603–1618

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bardhan PK (1984) Land, labor and rural poverty: essays in development economics. Columbia University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Basu K (1986) One kind of power. Oxf Econ Pap 38:259–282

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baum F, Ziersch AM (2003) Social capital. J Epidemiol Community Health 57:320–323

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • BBS (2002) Bangladesh economic review. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Dhaka

    Google Scholar 

  • BBS (2006) Bangladesh economic review. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Dhaka

    Google Scholar 

  • Berg C, Emran MS (2011) Does microfinance help the ultrapoor cope with seasonal shocks? Evidence from seasonal famine (Monga) in Bangladesh. Working paper. SSRN http://ssrn.com/abstract=1802073

  • Berg C, Emran MS, Shilpi F (2013) Microfinance and moneylenders: long-run effects of MFIs on informal credit market in Bangladesh. MPRA paper 49040

  • Bryan G, Chowdhury S, Mobarak AM (2014) Under-investment in a profitable technology: the case of seasonal migration in Bangladesh. Econometrica 82:1671–1748

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell C, Williams B, Gilgen D (2002) Is social capital a useful conceptual tool for exploring community level influences on HIV infection? An exploratory case study from South Africa. Aids Care 14:41–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chaudhuri S, Paxson C (2002) Smoothing consumption under income seasonality: buffer stocks vs. credit markets. Discussion paper 4, Columbia University

  • Coleman JS (1988) Social capital in the creation of human capital. Am J Sociol 94:95–120

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim E (1895) The rules of sociological method. Free Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • FAO (2010) The state of food insecurity in the world. Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome

    Google Scholar 

  • Faridi R, Khalily B (2008) Impact of PRIME interventions at the household level. The national seminar on Monga, Dhaka

  • Gayen K, Raeside R (2007) Social networks, normative influence and health delivery in rural Bangladesh. Soc Sci Med 65:900–914

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glaeser E, Laibson D, Sacerdote B (2002) An economic approach to social capital. Econ J 112:437–458

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman RM, Speers MA, McLeroy K, Fawcett S, Kegler M, Parker E, Smith SR, Sterling TD, Wallerstein N (1998) Identifying and defining the dimensions of community capacity to provide a basis for measurement. Health Educ Behav 25:258–278

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guiso L, Sapienza P, Zingales L (2004) The role of social capital in financial development. Am Econ Rev 94:526–556

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halder SR (1998) Material and social well-being of the participants. In: Husain AMM (ed) Poverty alleviation and empowerment, the second impact assessment study of BRAC’s rural development programme. BRAC, Dhaka, pp 29–54

    Google Scholar 

  • Halder SR, Mosley P (2004) Working with the ultra-poor: learning from BRAC experiences. J Int Dev 16:387–406

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harper R, Kelly M (2003) Measuring social capital in the United Kingdom. Office for National Statistics, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Heaney CA, Israel BA (2002) Social networks and social support. Health Behav Health Educ Theory Res Practice 3:185–209

    Google Scholar 

  • Hossain M (1988) Nature and impact of the green revolution in Bangladesh. Research report 67, International Food Policy Research Institute in collaboration with the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Washington

  • Hyyppä MT, Mäki J (2001) Individual-level relationships between social capital and self-rated health in a bilingual community. Prev Med 32:148–155

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Islam MK, Gerdtham UG, Gullberg B, Lindström M, Merlo J (2008) Social capital externalities and mortality in Sweden. Econ Hum Biolgy 6:19–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacoby HG, Skoufias E (1998) Testing theories of consumption behavior using information on aggregate shocks: income seasonality and rainfall in rural India. Am J Agr Econ 80:1–14

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karlan DS (2005) Using experimental economics to measure social capital and predict financial decisions. Am Econ Rev 95:1688–1699

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kawachi I (1999) Social capital and community effects on population and individual health. Ann N Y Acad Sci 896:120–130

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khandker SR (2011) Seasonality of income and poverty in Bangladesh. J Dev Econ 97:244–256

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khandker SR, Khalily MAB, Samad SA (2010) Vulnerability to seasonal hunger and its mitigation in northwest Bangladesh. National seminar on Monga, PKSF, Dhaka

  • Klein R, Vella F (2009) A semiparametric model for binary response and continuous outcomes under index heteroskedasticity. J Appl Econom 24:735–762

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klein R, Vella F (2010) Estimating a class of triangular simultaneous equations models without exclusion restrictions. J Appl Econom 154:154–164

    Google Scholar 

  • Latkin CA, Forman V, Knowlton A, Sherman S (2003) Norms, social networks, and HIV-related risk behaviors among urban disadvantaged drug users. Soc Sci Med 56:465–476

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mallick D (1998) Measuring well-being: panel data analysis. In: Husain AMM (ed) Poverty alleviation and empowerment, the second impact assessment study of BRAC’s rural development programme. BRAC, Dhaka, pp 55–78

    Google Scholar 

  • Mallick D (2013) How effective is a big push to the small? Evidence from a quasi-experiment. World Dev 41:168–182

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matin I, Halder SR (2007) Combining methodologies for better targeting of the extreme poor: lessons from BRAC’s CFPR/TUP programme. BRAC, Dhaka

    Google Scholar 

  • Paxson CH (1993) Consumption and income seasonality in Thailand. J Polit Econ 101:39–72

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pitt MM, Khandker SR (2002) Credit programmes for the poor and seasonality in rural Bangladesh. J Dev Stud 39:1–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pitt MM, Khandker SR, Cartwright J (2006) Empowering women with micro finance: evidence from Bangladesh. Econ Dev Cult Change 54:791–831

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Putnam R (1993) Making democracy work: civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Rahman H (1995) Mora Kartik: seasonal deficits and the vulnerability of the rural poor. Rethinking rural poverty: Bangladesh as a case study. Sage, New Delhi

    Google Scholar 

  • Rahman PMM, Matsui N, Ikemoto Y (2008) The chronically poor in rural Bangladesh: livelihood constraints and capabilities. Taylor & Francis, Routledge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sen AK (1981) Poverty and famines: an essay on entitlement and deprivation. Clarendon Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen AK (1999) Development as freedom. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Shahriar TM, Khalily B (2008) Coping strategies of the poor and vulnerability in greater Rangpur: what matters most. The national seminar on Monga, Dhaka

    Google Scholar 

  • Szreter S, Woolcock M (2004) Health by association? Social capital, social theory, and the political economy of public health. Int J Epidemiol 33:650–667

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Veenstra G (2000) Social capital, SES and health: an individual-level analysis. Soc Sci Med 50:619–630

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waterkeyn J, Cairncross S (2005) Creating demand for sanitation and hygiene through community health clubs: a cost-effective intervention in two districts in Zimbabwe. Soc Sci Med 61:1958–1970

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • WFP (2010) Emergency safety net for vulnerable groups affected by high food price and natural disasters in Bangladesh. World Food Programme

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh

    Rejaul K. Bakshi

  2. Department of Economics, Deakin University, 70 Elgar Road, Burwood, VIC, 3125, Australia

    Debdulal Mallick & Mehmet A. Ulubaşoğlu

Authors
  1. Rejaul K. Bakshi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Debdulal Mallick
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Mehmet A. Ulubaşoğlu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Debdulal Mallick.

Additional information

The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions received from an anonymous referee, an associate editor of this journal, Rajeev Dehejia, Shahe Emran, Asadul Islam, and the participants in both the 2012 Australasian Conference of Economists and the 2013 Australasian Econometric Society Meeting. The authors would also like to thank the Research and Evaluation Division (RED), BRAC for providing the dataset.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6, 7 and 8.

Table 6 Comparison of some selected socio-economic indicators between the NGO-targeted poor and the extreme poor
Full size table
Table 7 GDP per capita in the three northern districts of Bangladesh
Full size table
Table 8 List of employment during Kartik month
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bakshi, R.K., Mallick, D. & Ulubaşoğlu, M.A. Social capital as a coping mechanism for seasonal deprivation: the case of the Monga in Bangladesh. Empir Econ 57, 239–262 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-018-1438-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-018-1438-3

Keywords

JEL Classification

Search

Navigation