Child Equity Atlas - BIDS

Child Equity Atlas
cent for boys. Female youth literacy rate is
higher than that of the male at 76.6 per cent
against 74.0 per cent. However, significant
differences were observed in youth literacy
by female and male among the upazilas in
the country. Bangladesh has made substantial
progress in fostering gender equality in the
education sector as investment and social
mobilization efforts of past and present
Governments continue to close the equity
gap. Similar attention is required to address
emerging pockets of disparity, for instance
in the out of school children and its gender
dimension, including where boys or girls are
at a disadvantage.
5. The proportion of out of school children (OOSC)
was alarmingly high, almost one in four, mainly
caused by late entrance of children to school.
The proportion of OOSC had a correlation
of 0.9 with the deprivation index. Thus the
higher the proportion of OOSC in an upazila
the higher the composite deprivation index.
The worst upazila (Khaliajuri in Netrokona
District) registered almost half (44.9 per cent)
of children out of school, revealing a clear
and urgent remedial action for parents and
the education sector at national, district and
especially upazila levels to address.
6. The proportion of real child worker (10-14
years old) is high, at 6 per cent nationally, 9.1
per cent for boys and 2.6 per cent for girls. In
the urban areas, the overall proportion was
very high too at 9 per cent being 11 per cent
and 7 per cent respectively for boys and girls
nationally but as high as 18.1 per cent and
16.6 per cent for boys and girls respectively
in Dhaka City Corporation (DCC). This Child
Equity Atlas also revealed a gender pattern
for real child labour in the DCC, with boy
child workers more concentrated in the old
city (where small engineering workshops
are largely concentrated) while girl child
workers are more in the slum areas and
with garment industry. In rural areas, child
workers are concentrated in agriculture and
service sectors and in urban areas, they are
concentrated in service and industrial sectors.
Again, to address the issue of real child
workers, private public partnership needs to
be forged on the one hand with concomitant
collaboration between the Ministry of Women
and Children Affairs, Ministry of Primary and
Mass Education, Ministry of Social Welfare,
civil society, communities and development
partners and organized private sector, to
promote the rights of children and gender
equality in industry, services and education
sectors as a business principle.
7. The Composite Deprivation Index generated
from the 2011 Population Census data analysis
revealed close similarity in the patterns of
the deprived districts, 35 prepared using MICS
2009 data, partly used to identify the UNDAF
priority districts.
8. Among the 50 most deprived upazilas, only
one has above average progress in literacy
reduction. These least performing upazilas
are located in the remotest areas and had the
lowest population density. It is socially just
and makes sound economic sense for each of
the key social services and other development
institutions to prioritize development policies,
programmes, budgets and partnerships in
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A Case for Geographic Targeting of Basic Social Services to
Mitigate Inequalities in Bangladesh, http://www.unicef.org/
bangladesh/Geo_targeting_25dec_PDF.pdf
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