Shafiul Azam

Dr Shafiul Azam is a development micro-economist and micro-econometrician. He has an MSc (economics) and a PhD (economics) from the University of Manchester. He served on the government of Bangladesh's Planning Commission for over eight years, and worked as a consultant for International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNDP and World Bank.

His research interests revolve around development economics, micro-econometrics, economics of growth and household income dynamics, particularly relating to households' poverty and vulnerability to poverty, risks, uncertainty and the dynamics that lead households into and out of poverty. He also has a special interest in the economics of policy/programme evaluation and modelling farm households' welfare in the context of market failures. Other interests include the linkages between climate change, land use and food security and their impacts on the economic wellbeing and living standards of rural households. Most of his research targets South Asia, South-east Asia, and African countries.

Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Director of PGR Studies, ABS

Current Teaching:

Financial Econometrics (ECM1020), Introduction to Econometrics (EC30920), Advanced Econometrics (EC32020), Economics Principles and Skills I (EC10120), and Economics Principles and Skills II (EC10320).

Current Research

Title: - A Dynamic Analysis of Poverty and Vulnerability in Wales: Moving Beyond the "Conventional" Approach (ESRC Reference: ES/M007235/1)

Principal Investigator: Dr Md Shafiul Azam

Co-investigators: Dr Maria Plotnikova, Prof Peter Midmore, and Prof Andrew Henley

Poverty and deprivation in Wales: cross sectional view

We developed a multi-dimensional poverty index for Wales (MDP-Wales) incorporating non-monetary indicators of poverty and deprivation available in Understanding Society data (waves 1 – 7).

Our index is based on five main facets: resources and living standards, education, health, housing conditions, civic engagement and social participation. We find that about 9% of the Wales population in 2010/11 was multi-dimensionally poor (raw headcount: 21.5%) falling to 6% for the year 2015/16 (raw headcount: 14%). We find statistically significant poverty reduction, both in terms of incidence and intensity over the period under investigation.  We also find that slightly less than 6% of Wales population are both income and multi-dimensionally poor, in terms of headcount ratio. However, significant mismatch between traditional income-based poverty measure and non-monetary multidimensional measure is identified.

Understanding poverty persistence and dynamics: longitudinal view

Our dynamic analysis reveals significant transitions in and out of poverty, irrespective of poverty definition, monetary or non-monetary. Our results also indicate duration dependence in poverty: the longer someone stays in poverty the more likely it is that one will continue to experience poverty in subsequent periods. Results from multivariate discrete time duration modeling reveal heterogeneity across the population with regard to risks of exit and re-entry to poverty, indicating vulnerability to persistent poverty for some. This is more so for the multidimensional context. Individuals from households with higher numbers of children, with a household head without qualifications, and with health problems are found to be particularly susceptible to persistent poverty. This arises from a combination of higher probability of re-entry and lower probability of exit. This result is true for both measures but is more pronounced for multidimensional poverty.