Getting and Spending in Central Bangladesh: Money Management Patterns in Fifty Low-Income Households

The Hrishipara Daily Diaries project tracks the daily money transactions of 50 low-income households living in or near a market town in central Bangladesh. Work began in May 2015 and for the first year was supported by CGAP, for which this Interim Report, covering the period up to the end of March 2016, was prepared. Data collection will continue until at least March 2017, after which further reports will be written.

The aim of the project is to improve our understanding of how low-income households manage their money, and to reveal the links between money flows and the economic and social lives that they serve. In this Interim Report, the focus is on three areas of particular interest to CGAP: the use of phone-based digital financial services, the cash flows of smallholder farmers and, above all, changing patterns in the use of MFI services, especially with regard to MFIs' emerging role as the main depository of the savings of low-income Bangladeshis.

The fifty respondent households have a wide range of occupations and lifestyles, with incomes ranging from extreme poverty to relatively comfortable "near poor" status. Of the 50 diarists, 20 are women, and ages range from under 20 to over 65. In each household, data was collected from a single individual, often the main income earner or the key money manager. But by collecting all the flows through this diarist’s hands, including intra-household transactions, a picture of the household as a whole is formed.