Bangladesh is a small country of only about 147,570 square kilometers (population census, 2009), but its social and cultural life is so diverse that the land has been seen as a paradise by many scientists. Bangladesh is ranked as the eighth most populous country in the world, with 148.5 million inhabitants, but occupies only one three thousandth of the world's land surface (Mabud, 2008). In a regional context, South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, comprise a quarter of the world's population, with 1.5 billion people, and contribute 24% of the annual increase of 80 million people (ibid, 2008 ). The population density in Bangladesh was approximately 720 per square kilometer and 843 per square kilometer in 1991 and 2001 respectively. By 2009 it had increased to 993 per square kilometre. The sex ratio is 104.8 males per 100 females (population census, 2009). The literacy rate, obtained from the 2001 census, was 46.20% for that part of the population aged seven years and above. The percentage of Muslims in the population was 89.6, while the gender and social exclusion/inclusion percentages of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians were 9.3, 0.6 and 0.3 respectively (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2007). Bangladesh is well known for the ethnic homogeneity of its population, as over 98% of the population is Bangladeshi, predominantly Bengali speaking. However, there are more than 49 ethnic communities living across Bangladesh and they constitute approximately 2% of the total population. Since no ethnographic investigations have been conducted on the indigenous peoples of Bangladesh, it is very difficult to present an accurate count of their numbers (IPRA Biennial Conference, 2006). Therefore, Uddin (2...... middle of paper ...... egorized four types of families: always poor, never poor, ascending families and descending families. First, the "always poor" families or "chronically poor" the group that remained poor in both periods constituted 31% of the families in the sample; the second, the "never poor", who remained out of poverty in both periods, represented 25%; , the “growing families” were those who fled poverty, and these represented 26% of the families; and finally, the “descendant families”, who fell into poverty, represented 18% of the sample “descendants” is the net change in poverty during this period, the study once again confirms that mobility among the poor and vulnerable is far greater than the aggregate net change in poverty at the national level..