DEEP Bangladesh Challenge Fund awards grants to researchers focusing on poverty reduction

Eight research teams in Bangladesh have won grants for projects which will inform work tackling poverty and vulnerability to poverty in the country. These projects will feed into national strategy, policy and programming by providing insights and evidence tailored to the needs and priorities of policymakers working on these issues.

Applications for the DEEP Bangladesh Challenge Fund  opened in December 2024. Political instability in the country meant that the application and approval process was prolonged, however eight projects have now been selected to receive funding. The winning projects cover many of the pressing issues that currently face Bangladesh from internal migration to urban, rural and extreme poverty and education to climate change.

They are:

• BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), for a project which will use Small Area Estimation techniques to predict internal migration patterns. The resulting data will allow policymakers to prioritise infrastructure and welfare investments in areas with increasing migration, while targeting economic support programs to regions with declining migration.

• International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (icddr,b) for a project which will conduct a community level validation of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) which identifies the varied dimensions of urban poverty. The MPI will be modified and validated based on findings, allowing the development of more targeted and responsive development programmes to tackle urban poverty.  

• ChangeMaker Nexus Ltd. for a project which will survey smallholder farmers in Khulna on coping mechanisms, adaptive strategies, gender-specific barriers to recovery and perceptions of institutional support, related to the 2024 waterlogging crisis. Findings will inform policy which will help farming communities withstand future shocks and transition towards long-term economic security.

• Md. Moniruzzaman at the University of Dhaka for a project which will examine how non-farm sector work can complement agricultural incomes, mitigate risks associated with agricultural shocks and shape household poverty dynamics for rural households. The study will inform targeted policies for rural poverty alleviation through the transition to non-farm employment.

• Jyotirmoy Saha at the World Bank, with researchers from BRAC, the University of Dhaka and Georgetown University, for a project which will quantify the impact of extreme heat on non-communicable disease prevalence, productivity loss, and poverty risk in Bangladesh. The research will focus on vulnerable populations and findings will support Bangladesh’s National Adaptation Plan.

• Youth Policy Forum (YPF) for a project which will test whether student and parent exposure to videos featuring role models who have succeeded through education can reduce school dropout rates. The aim is to test the effectiveness of the intervention as a cost-effective and easily scalable tool to promote school attendance and enhance socio-economic development.

• South Asian Network for Economic Modeling (SANEM) for a project which will examine the dynamics of extreme poverty and its socioeconomic causes, including how climate change, corruption and systemic political and economic structures can create poverty traps for many groups. The aim is to identify the pull factors that enable a transition out of poverty

• Fahim Shahriar at the University of Chittagong, with researchers at the University of Dhaka, for a project which will use machine learning to measure the correlation between urban migration and urban poverty in real time. Findings will identify high-risk areas and vulnerable populations and will help policymakers design targeted interventions to mitigate the adverse effects of migration-driven urban poverty

Key Bangladeshi stakeholders, including policy makers and research communities, shaped the research focus, aims and scope of the Bangladesh Challenge Fund. These stakeholders have helped form a Steering Committee which approved the successful projects and will support the dissemination of the research findings so that they feed into programmes and policies.

Zulfiqar Ali, Chair of the Bangladesh National Steering Committee, said: ‘Bangladesh is undergoing a period of profound economic, social, and political transition, marked by heightened macroeconomic pressures, evolving governance challenges, and increasing exposure to climate-related shocks. As a climate-vulnerable lower-middle-income country, recurrent extreme weather events—such as floods, cyclones, and heat stress—are interacting with structural labor market constraints, rising living costs, and demographic pressures to reshape the nature and distribution of extreme poverty. These dynamics mean that poverty in Bangladesh is becoming more fluid, localized, and multidimensional. The selected research projects will generate timely, data-driven evidence to capture these rapidly changing poverty trajectories, thereby strengthening the capacity of policymakers to design responsive, targeted, and adaptive interventions in real time.’

Jamie Williams, Project Manager of the DEEP Challenge Fund, said: ‘We would like to congratulate the successful researchers and research teams and to thank everyone who applied to the DEEP Bangladesh Challenge Fund. The successful projects will provide valuable insights for policymakers as they design programmes to increase resilience amongst vulnerable groups and support people out of extreme poverty.’

The DEEP Challenge Fund is already running in Tanzania and Ethiopia with project findings beginning to be published. Winning Challenge Fund projects in Madagascar have also been announced.