Household Savings Behaviour in Bangladesh : Issues and Evidence
Nuimuddin Chowdhury
Abstract
The paper makes an attempt to glean certain salient aspects of the character of the household savings and investment process in developing country contexts. In part, also, this is concerned with identifying formulations of the determinants of household savings that are better suited to the behavioural-structural polity to be found in developing economies. In its empirical part, the paper goes on to test some models of household saving, including the Friedmanesque hypothesis relating to savings out of transitory income components. It is argued that, as would be expected, a Keynesian type relation describes the saving model of the household reasonably well, in both rural and urban areas of Bangladesh that incidentally, the use of the data from 1973/74 and 1976/77 Household Expenditure Surveys Yield quite aberrant results, and, finally, that savings out of transitory income components in rural areas of Bangladesh are consistently and significantly higher than in urban areas.