Latest Data Insights

GDP grew 3.5% in the year to June 2025 — half the 6.6% average of the 2010s, and the slowest since 1991 apart from the pandemic year 2020.

After dipping to 3.4% in the pandemic year 2020, growth bounced back to 6.9% in 2021 and 7.1% in 2022. It has slowed every year since: 5.8% in 2023, 4.2% in 2024 and 3.5% in 2025 — matching 1991, and slower than any year since then except 2020.

Government spending on education was 2.03% of GDP in 2024, almost exactly where it stood in 1999 (2.13%) — the economy has grown, but the share devoted to schools has not.

A share of GDP that stays level means public spending on education has broadly moved in step with the size of the economy rather than gaining priority within it.

Personal remittances received were 7.4% of GDP in 2025, up from a low of 4.6% in 2017 but below the 10.6% peak of 2012.

The share rose from 3.7% in 2000 to a peak of 10.6% in 2012, then drifted down for five years to 4.6% in 2017. It stayed near 5% through 2023 (5.1%), before climbing to 6.1% in 2024 and 7.4% in 2025.

In 1991, 51% of Bangladeshis lived on less than $3.00 a day. By the 2022 household survey, 5.9% did — one of the fastest falls in extreme poverty anywhere.

By Bangladesh's own, higher national poverty line, 18.7% of people were still poor in 2022. Escaping extreme poverty is not the same as escaping poverty: millions of households sit just above the line, where a flood, an illness or a lost job can push them back below it.

Bangladesh's Gini index jumped from 27.6 in 1991 to about 33 by 2000 and has stayed near 31–33 since, edging down to 30.9 in 2022.

Since then inequality has been broadly flat, easing to 30.9 in 2022. Survey-based consumption measures tend to understate inequality, because the richest households are rarely captured and income is usually more unequal than spending — so the true gap is likely wider than these figures show.

Women's labour force participation rose from 24% in 1990 to a peak of 44% in 2022, then slipped to 39% in 2024 — still half the rate for men (81%).

Men's participation has stayed around 80% throughout. Most working women are in informal jobs without contracts, sick pay or protection — on family farms, in homes or in small enterprises — so participation alone understates how far women are from equal, secure work.

The 2022 National Child Labour Survey counted 3.54 million working children aged 5–17. 1.78 million were in child labour and 1.07 million in hazardous work, down from 1.28 million in 2013.

The fall in hazardous work is real progress. But total child labour edged up by about 4.5% over the decade, and hazardous child labour remains far from the government's goal of eliminating it by 2025. Most working children live in rural areas, and keeping them in school — through stipends, school meals and enforcement — remains the most effective protection.

Birth registration of children under five rose from 10% in 2006 to 56% in the 2019 household survey — but 44% still had no legal proof of who they are.

Registration has risen sharply since online registration began, but in the 2019 survey 44% of young children were still unregistered. Universal birth registration is a Sustainable Development Goal target (16.9) and one of the cheapest ways to widen access to justice.

The number of refugees in Bangladesh — almost all Rohingya from Myanmar — jumped from about 276,000 in 2016 to over 930,000 in 2017 and reached 1.18 million in 2025.

The number has kept rising, to over 1.1 million, as new arrivals continue and children are born in the camps. Most live in the world's largest refugee settlement, dependent on shrinking international aid, with little access to formal education or work and no safe route home.

Bangladesh's CO₂ emissions have grown more than fivefold since 1990, but at 0.72 tonnes per person in 2024 they remain far below South Asia (1.98) and the world (4.69).

Emissions per person have still grown more than fivefold since 1990 as electricity, industry and transport expanded, mostly on gas and, increasingly, coal and oil. How Bangladesh powers the next stage of its growth will decide whether that curve keeps climbing.

Total greenhouse gas emissions rose from 75 to 221 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent between 1990 and 2024 — still under 0.5% of the global total.

Unlike in richer countries, a large share of Bangladesh's emissions comes from agriculture rather than fossil fuels, because rice paddies release methane. That makes the mix of solutions different too: better water management in paddies and cleaner cooking fuels matter as much as cleaner power plants.

In 1990 almost three-quarters of Bangladesh's energy came from renewables — mostly firewood and dung. By 2021 the share was 25%, and modern renewables still supply under 2% of electricity.

The real challenge is modern renewables. Despite one of the world's largest solar home system programmes, renewables generated only about 1.5% of Bangladesh's electricity in 2021; the grid runs mainly on gas, oil and coal. Scaling up rooftop and utility solar is central to the country's plans to cut import bills and emissions.

8.4% of Bangladesh's population lived on land below 5 metres of elevation in 2015 — more than 13 million people exposed to storm surges, salinity and sea-level rise.

The share has fallen slightly since 1990 because cities on higher ground have grown faster, but the number of people at risk has not. Rising seas push salt water into rice fields and drinking water, and make cyclone storm surges reach further inland — which is why embankments, mangroves and salt-tolerant crops are central to adaptation on the coast.

Forest covered 15.3% of Bangladesh's land in 1990 and 14.4% in 2024. The Sundarbans mangroves, home to the Bengal tiger, are among the most important — and most threatened — of what remains.

The most valuable remaining forest is the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, shared with India. It shelters the Bengal tiger and hundreds of other species and acts as a natural barrier against cyclone storm surges — but faces salinity, shipping, industrial pollution and rising seas.

In 1997, six in ten Bangladeshi children under five were stunted. By 2022 fewer than one in four were — but that still means millions of children whose growth is held back.

By the 2022 Demographic and Health Survey the share had fallen to 24%, one of the fastest declines in the world, driven by falling poverty, better maternal education, sanitation and health care. But with more than 14 million children under five, nearly one in four stunted is still millions of children, concentrated among the poorest households and highest in Sylhet division.

WHO estimates Bangladesh's suicide rate fell from 4.8 to 2.8 deaths per 100,000 between 2000 and 2021. Under-reporting is likely, and mental health services reach very few people.

These figures should be read with caution. Suicide carries heavy stigma in Bangladesh, so many deaths are recorded as accidents or not recorded at all; the true rate is likely higher. Mental health services are concentrated in a few city hospitals, and most people with depression or anxiety never see a trained professional.

Analysis of National TB Control Program data shows significant regional variation, with Chittagong division reporting 196 cases per 100,000 population — nearly 1.6 times the national average.

Geographic isolation, malnutrition, and limited healthcare infrastructure create perfect conditions for TB spread and treatment failure. While urban areas like Dhaka maintain relatively controlled TB burdens at 182 per 100,000, remote regions with poor road access and few healthcare facilities struggle with late diagnoses and incomplete treatment courses.

In 2000, only about one in three Bangladeshis had electricity. By 2022, more than 99% did — one of the fastest electrification drives anywhere.

By 2022 that share had climbed to 99.4%, putting universal access within reach for one of the world's most densely populated countries. The chart shows how steep the climb was after 2010, when access rose from 55% to 96% in a single decade.

In 2000, about 86 of every 1,000 children died before their fifth birthday. By 2023 that figure had dropped to around 31 — and from 1990, the decline is almost 80%.

The gains came from many directions at once: near-universal childhood immunization, oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoea, vitamin A supplementation, better access to skilled birth attendance, and falling poverty.

Better seed varieties, irrigation and fertiliser have lifted Bangladesh's rice yields from 2.6 tonnes per hectare in 1990 to 5.3 in 2024. The same land now feeds far more people.

It has worked. Average rice yields rose from 2.57 tonnes per hectare in 1990 to 5.29 in 2024, and total rice production grew from about 27 million to 61 million tonnes.

Secondary enrolment for girls caught up with boys around 2000 and has pulled clearly ahead since — helped by stipend programmes that pay families to keep daughters in school.

The turnaround is often credited to the Female Secondary School Stipend programmes launched in the 1990s, which paid tuition and a stipend to girls who stayed in school, remained unmarried and kept up attendance. Free textbooks and more schools in rural areas also helped.

The share of Bangladeshis using the internet climbed from under 4% in 2010 to 53% in 2024 — roughly 93 million people, most of them connecting through affordable mobile data.

Almost all of this growth came through mobile phones: the arrival of 3G in 2013 and 4G in 2018, cheap smartphones and some of the lowest mobile-data prices in the world.

At 79% of health spending, out-of-pocket costs in Bangladesh are the highest in South Asia — and they have risen, not fallen, over the past two decades.

The trend runs against most of the region. Total health spending has stayed at a little over 2% of GDP for two decades, so as the population has grown richer and sicker with chronic diseases, families have filled the gap — mostly through pharmacies and private clinics.

Household water testing shows arsenic exposure has fallen sharply since 2009 — but almost all of the progress is at the lower WHO threshold. The number of people drinking water above Bangladesh's own, looser limit has barely moved.

The good news is that exposure is falling. When the national Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys tested the water people actually drink, the number of people above the World Health Organization's guideline of 10 µg/L fell from 46.7 million in 2009 to 27.5 million in 2019.