Finds govt survey on standard of living for pay commission
Published : 18 October 2026
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Updated : 18 October 2026, 03:36
Rejaul Karim Byron
As many as 47.42 percent of households across Bangladesh have fallen into debt for soaring living expenses against stagnant earnings, with rural families hit harder than city dwellers, according to a special survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) at the request of the National Pay Commission.
Over the past year, 51.91 percent households in rural areas, 40.19 percent in urban areas and 32.11 percent in city corporation areas were forced to borrow to cover basic living expenses, found the Living Standard Survey 2025 conducted by BBS’s Poverty and Livelihood Statistics Cell.
It found the average national monthly household income stood at Tk 33,513, while the average national monthly expenses amounted to Tk 35,311.
City corporation areas recorded the highest average monthly expenses of Tk 46,778, followed by urban areas (Tk 37,344) and rural areas (Tk 32,532).
At the national level, monthly expenses are split evenly between food and non-food items, but it diverges by region. Rural areas spend more on food, while urban areas spend more on non-food items. Non-food expenses account for 56.7 percent of city corporation households’ monthly expenses.
In contrast, the 2022 Household Income and Expenditure Survey found the national average household income to be Tk 32,422 and the national average expenses Tk 31,500.
The commission ordered the special survey to aid in its recommendation for salary hike under the ninth pay scale.
The average national monthly household income stood at Tk 33,513, while the average national monthly expenses amounted to Tk 35,311, the survey found.
The survey, which was conducted from September 14 to September 18 last year, gathered data using tablet devices and digital Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing across 150 primary sampling units, interviewing 3,000 households across rural, urban and city corporation areas.
The latest survey findings serve as a mirror image of the weak macroeconomic environment Bangladesh has experienced since the pandemic, said Zahid Hussain, a former lead economist of the World Bank’s Dhaka office.
There has been a steady decline in economic growth in recent years alongside high single-digit or double-digit inflation that is showing no signs of abating. At the same time, employment has remained stagnant while real wages have steadily fallen, he said.
Inflation has outpaced wage growth for 56 consecutive months in September, government data show.
In September, wage growth fell to 7.9 percent from 8.05 percent the previous month, according to the BBS’s Wage Rate Index, which tracks monthly wages of low-paid skilled and unskilled workers across 63 occupations in agriculture, industry and services.
“Under these circumstances, asking any family about their situation yields the expected answer that incomes are dropping while costs are climbing, leaving many with no choice but to take on debt,” Zahid said.
He stressed that the surge in expenses is not driven by an improved quality of life, but rather by the rising cost of living.
Explaining why rural debt is higher than urban debt, he pointed out that income stagnation is far more pronounced in villages, whereas cities offer relatively more economic opportunities.
While remittance income serves as a positive factor in rural areas, its benefits reach no more than 7 to 8 percent of the rural population. Consequently, a large portion of the population is now surviving by depleting savings built up in earlier years, he said.
“This survey data confirms the WB’s macroeconomic projections that poverty rates are on the rise,” Zahid added.
A prolonged slowdown is eroding household welfare through weak labour demand and persistent inflation, pushing national poverty to an estimated 22.5 percent in 2026 from 18.7 percent in 2022, according to the WB’s latest Bangladesh Development Update, released on October 6.
Extreme poverty, measured at the $3-a-day international line, rose from 5.9 percent to an estimated 10.1 percent over the same period.
The economic strain is largely driven by a four-year inflationary surge that has systematically squeezed household purchasing power.
This is compounded by acute energy shortages that have curtailed business operating hours, forced factory closures, and stalled job creation, particularly within the country’s industrial sectors, the WB report added.