Poverty Profiling of the Estuarine Set Bag Net Fishermen Community in Bangladesh

Poverty is a major threat to the coastal communities specially the estuarine set-beg net fishermen in Bangladesh. This study covers the poverty profiling of this community through traditional approaches as well as sustainable livelihoods approach. The headcount ratio of the investigated villages ranged between 43% and 74% with an average 52% which is higher then the national poverty level (37.4%) of Bangladesh. Livelihoods assets profiling shows that high level of poverty is prevailing in all the capital assets needed for the sustainable livelihoods of the estuarine set bag net fishermen. Poverty levels of different livelihood components are quantified using fuzzy method. Human poverty index, physical poverty index, social poverty index, financial poverty index and natural poverty index of the estuarine set bag net fishermen community of Bangladesh are found to be 0.64, 0.29, 0.66, 0.55 and 0.85 respectively. Natural, social and human poverty levels are found to be very much acute among the five capital assets investigated.