Bangladesh has made spectacular strides forward in its economic development, registering impressive achievements of sustained economic growth and poverty reduction. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of the population (24.3%) still lives in poverty and almost 70 million people (about 43% of the population) are considered poor and vulnerable. Over the past decades, the government of Bangladesh has implemented various types of safety net programmes to address risks faced by poor and marginalised groups. Currently, Bangladesh spends about 2 percent of the GDP on social security, comprising over 100 programmes. However, due to inadequate funding implementation-related difficulties and malpractices that result in a high degree of targeting errors, improving efficiency and effectiveness of these programmes poses a major challenge. One important consequence of this is the exclusion of many poor and vulnerable people from the coverage of Social Security Programmes (SSPs).

The adoption of the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS) in recent times has been a major policy advancement that aims to overcome programmatic and implementation loopholes by undertaking wide-ranging reforms and by streamlining the operational procedures involving the social security system. These reform initiatives are timely and should enhance access for the targeted population groups. However, given the nature of the reforms involving several implementing ministries, the full and effective implementation of the NSSS will take several years.  In the meantime, building the knowledgebase of the existing access barriers is most appropriate to keep such a crucial issue as part of the relevant policy discourse, which can prompt measures in alleviating the problem at least in the short to medium term. The ground realities associated with accessing SSPs should also inform the NSSS implementation process, helping it, if needed, improvise, modify and innovate certain features within the on-going initiatives to tackle the barriers in a more effective manner.

In this context, the current study sheds light on the targeting efficiency of SSPs and provides fresh insights into the factors leading to high exclusion problems faced by the citizens belonging to the poorest and vulnerable groups. While the NSSS reform agenda take largely a supply-side and top-down approach, this study makes an in-depth assessment of the demand side issues based on empirical and qualitative field-work-based research to offer complementary perspectives. The key objectives of this research are as follows:

• Assessment of the high exclusion rate in accessing social security programmes
• Identification of factors that affect the participation of the poor and marginalized groups in social security programmes
• Providing way forward to address the access barriers