Profile

I study why some households climb out of poverty and stay out, and why others fall back within a year. Most of my work uses long panel surveys that follow the same families for a decade or more.

I write for two audiences. The journals get the method. The ministries get a two-page note with the number they actually need, because a finding that never reaches a budget line has not finished being research.

PhD (LSE), MPhil (Oxford), MSS (Dhaka)

Research interests

• Poverty dynamics and household panel data
• Microfinance and its limits
• Social protection and cash transfers
• Labour migration within Bangladesh
• Measurement error in household surveys
• Impact evaluation methods

Publications

1. 2025Chowdhury, I., Rahman, S., & Ahmed, F. Why households fall back: a fourteen-year panel from rural Bangladesh Journal of Development Economics, 172, 103—128
2. 2024Chowdhury, I., & Begum, N. Cash transfers and the season they arrive in World Development, 178, 106—121
3. 2023Chowdhury, I. Microfinance after thirty years: what the panel data shows Economic Development and Cultural Change, 71(4), 891—920
4. 2022Ahmed, F., Chowdhury, I., & Karim, M. Internal migration and the households left behind Population and Development Review, 48(2), 341—370
5. 2021Chowdhury, I., & Hossain, T. Recall error in consumption surveys: evidence from a split-sample trial Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, 9(3), 512—535

Grants

• 2023 — 2027Poverty Dynamics Panel, round fourEconomic and Social Research CouncilBDT 6.2 crore
• 2021 — 2024Seasonal cash transfers: a randomised trialWorld BankBDT 4.8 crore
• 2019 — 2022Measuring consumption without over-countingInternational Growth CentreBDT 1.9 crore

Teaching

• Applied EconometricsMSc · University of Dhaka
• Development EconomicsMSc · University of Dhaka
• Survey Design and MeasurementPhD · BIDS

Education

• 2008PhD in EconomicsLondon School of Economics
• 2004MPhil in EconomicsUniversity of Oxford
• 2002MSS in EconomicsUniversity of Dhaka