In late June and early July 2006, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS)
administered a survey questionnaire to 1,900 households residing in slum areas in Dhaka,
Chittagong, Khulna, and Rajshahi. This activity was carried out to support a broader effort
of the World Food Programme (WFP)-Bangladesh to develop a food security profile of
households residing in these slums that can be maintained through time to permit a better
understanding of the nature of and trends in the food security of these households. As such,
this representative household survey provides baseline information of value to the
government of Bangladesh and its development partners for use in designing programs to
assist such households better meet their food needs. While the BBS implemented the
survey, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was contracted by WFPBangladesh
to design the survey, draft the questionnaire, and complete a set of analyses on
the survey data.
This study adopts the commonly accepted definition of household food security that
a household is food secure if it can reliably gain access to food in sufficient quantity and
quality for all household members to enjoy a healthy and active life. A conceptual
framework of the determinants of food security for poor urban households was developed
that pays particular attention to how households secure access to food through the market.
As such, a key feature of this framework is how the urban poor participate in local labor
markets to acquire income by which to purchase food.