Bangladesh study finds 31 million people vulnerable to poverty

About 31 million people in Bangladesh live above the poverty line but remain vulnerable to falling below it after financial shocks, according to research presented Oct. 17 in Dhaka.

The Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) based its findings on a nationally representative survey of 8,067 households conducted in 2025. Nearly 18% of households fell into this vulnerable middle group, between the poverty line and median income.

PPRC estimated poverty at 27.93% in 2025, compared with the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) estimate of 18.7% in 2022. Extreme poverty reached 9.35%, compared with 5.6% in 2022.

The findings describe 2025 conditions, not a new October household count. More than half of surveyed households had a chronically ill member, while medical expenses triggered about two-thirds of reported household financial crises.