Rising commodity prices, increased expenditure on education and health, increased cost of transportation and other associated expenditures have worsened the plight of the low-income people.
Low income families are adopting different ways to cope with such situation, said DrSelimRaihan, Executive Director of South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM).
In the last six months, family wise expenditure increased by 12.4 percent in rural areas and 13.9 percent in urban areas. On an average it is 13.15 percent, the organization informed.
Raihan gave such information while revealing a survey report at a city hotel on Wednesday. SANEM has conducted the survey to understand in detail how the low-income people of Bangladesh are coping with this situation and what their thoughts are about the days ahead.
In this survey conducted from March 9 to March 18, information has been collected from regions under 1600 police stations. The survey was conducted in eight divisional districts of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Mymensingh, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Barisal, Khulna and Chittagong.
When common people were asked how they are dealing with rising costs, in response, 90.2 percent said they had changed their eating habits while 73.8 percent are borrowing from others and 55.9 percent said they have cut down on non-food items.
Around 55.5 percent have reduced opportunities to save, 39.3 percent are working overtime, and 35.3 percent are spending more than what they have saved, showed the report.
Around 94.4 percent of people have changed their diet to cope with the current situation in urban and rural areas. In villages it is 86 percent. About 73.8 percent of the people in the city and 73.8 percent of the people in the village are borrowing to deal with such situation.
Research Director of SANEM, Professor SaimaHaqueBidisha and other researchers were present at the event.