Population Movement of Bangladesh in Last Century

by M.A. Hoque

Introduction

Bangladesh, a comparatively newly born country, lies in the southern part of Asia. It has an area of 144,000 sq. km extending between latitudes 20 degrees and 27 degrees north and longitudes 88 degrees and 93 degrees east. It is a small country but has a huge population of around 110 million according to the 1991 census that makes her the densest country (720 persons per sq. km.) in the world.

Its economy is based on agriculture since the earliest period of its history. Except for hills in the south and northeast, mostly an alluvial plain with network of large rivers: the Ganges (locally called the Padma), the Jamuna and the Meghna rivers made the country highly potential for the agriculture.

Problem Statement

Dhaka, now the capital city of Bangladesh, has been served as capital city or central part for all economic, business, cultural and administrative activities for last 500 year with some periodical breaks. From the history it is known that people has been concentrating in or around this region.

The paper attempts to use the population census data for last century to determine the population centers for every 10 year and therefore the movement of the population centers. This will also proves that Dhaka has been the center of population for the last century. The geographic center of population is defined as the point where a rigid map of a country would balance if equal weighs were situated on it.

Population Characteristics of Bangladesh

Despite sustained domestic and international efforts to improve economic and demographic prospects, Bangladesh remains one of the world's poorest, most densely populated, and least developed nations. The economy is largely agricultural, with the cultivation of rice the single most important activity in the economy. Mostly because of the land scarcity, use of indigenous cultivation methods and concentration of business, industries & urban facilities in Dhaka, people moves from rural or other urban areas to Dhaka.

Source: Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics

Figure 1 shows the sudden change of total population in Bangladesh from 1951 while figure 2 shows the proportion of population distribution by Division (the largest Administration unit). It can be inferred that Dhaka is maintaining a constant ratio while others are declining except Rajshahi and Khulna divisions showing small increase for last couple of decades. The proportion of urban population of Bangladesh reached 20.15% in 1991 from 2.43 percent in 1901, 8.8% in 1974 and 15.2% in 1981.

Methodology

For this paper, population density data (Table 1) were available in the web site of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. These data were collected and use to calculate the total population by multiplying the area for each division.


Table 1: Population Density (per sq. km.) by Division from 1901-1991

Divisions	1901	1911	1921	1931	1941	1951	1961	1974	1981	1991

Barisal		187	197	214	165	287	274	321	408	490	561

Dhaka		267	303	323	345	415	404	491	685	843	1050

Khulna		171	171	173	179	205	209	261	394	478	570

Rajshahi	218	233	240	244	273	271	343	502	612	759

Chittagong	146	165	178	199	244	253	294	402	487	589

Source: Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics

ArcView GIS software was used to calculate the spatial center for each division. And then a GIS tool was used to calculate the spatial mean center of Bangladesh from divisional centers where population data were used as weights in the calculations. Same procedure was used to calculate the mean center for each year from 1901-91.

Results

The results show that for last 100 years the mean center of population of Bangladesh is located almost at the same place. The mean shifting of the centers from their previous years is 2.94 km while the standard deviation is 1.77 km. Again standard distance of these mean centers are quite similar showing that the population distributions of these years are almost same although the population size increased a lot. Dhaka, locating by a river named Buriganga, had an advantage of river communi- ation that played a strong role in ancient Dhaka. Today it still has all those factors to make it the center point of Bangladesh not in respect of commerce but also of population.


Table 2: Spatial Mean Center of Population

Year		Center X	Center Y	Standard Distance	Shift from Previous Year (km)

1901		519,316.459	642,020.017	141,017.357		--

1911		522,073.343	642,145.322	140,275.742		2.76

1921		523,895.364	640,935.813	140,060.506		2.11

1931		526,979.535	641,175.344	139,537.838		3.10

1941		529,906.374	635,115.786	139,303.830		6.73

1951		531,179.964	633,888.563	140,016.057		1.77

1961		528,317.085	636,658.685	140,112.554		3.98

1974		525,541.721	638,976.525	140,383.758		3.62

1981		525,385.007	639,423.239	140,107.160		0.47

1991		524,969.093	641,303.453	139,659.550		1.93

						Total Shift = 	26.47

The pattern of centers movement shows that untill 1931 it moved towards east, suddenly it shifted towards south-east and came back to north-west.

Conclusion

The objective of the paper is to determine the geographic population center for Bangladesh. This was determined and was found to be around Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh through out the century.

As planners, this is a very good study to know the direction of population movement in a district or region. The result proves that, population is concentrated in the center part of the country. Population and all economic activities have been concentrated in Dhaka for 100 years and it is already running beyond its capacity. So, planners must start thinking of decentralizing these activities to keep activities with the capacity and have a optimum use of every resources.

Reference

Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 1991 http://home.bangla.net/ndb/ana_vol1/density.htm
http://www.emulateme.com/content/bangladesh.htm
McGrew, J and Monroe, C. B. 2000 An Introduction to Statistical Problem Solving in Geography Dubuque, Wm. C. Brown Publishers