Abstract |
Bangladesh is one of the least urbanized countries in south Asia and features densely populated rural areas composed of clustered villages. Imbalanced industrial development and agrarian agony has drawn regional divergence of income distribution. This paper examines the extent of asymmetrical distribution of income among the districts of Bangladesh and its impact on the provision of public facilities in the year 2001. One of the main areas of innovation in this research work is that of the methodological instruments used to accomplish the objectives such as spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I), Location Quotient method, Gini Index, and Discrimination or Dissimilarity Index. The result attained reveals that the level of disparity varies considerably between districts, which lead to discrimination in the provision of public services in sixty-four districts. The comparative evaluation among income distribution and discrimination index of facilities provision reveals that districts within low-income groups are usually lowly and moderately deprived from provision of public facilities. This is because households of these districts are mainly involved in rural based income generating activities and almost deprived of urban facilities. Furthermore, most of the incomes generating establishments are concentrated in some selected districts. This sort of divergence of income is leading to disproportional regional growth resulting lower national growth as a whole. The regional convergence in terms of income and public facilities is required for the overall development of Bangladesh. |