Demographic and Socioeconomic Homogeneity among Districts and District Towns in Bangladesh

Exploring the homogeneity (or heterogeneity) at sub-national level is crucial as it associated with design, budget allocation and implementation of a research project. Since demographic and socioeconomic factors depict the first valuable insight of a community, it is imperative to explore the homogeneity within a country by considering these variables. Yet, the information on this aspect is scarce in Bangladesh. Therefore, the present study aimed to identify the district and district town specific homogeneity in Bangladesh. The data for this study were extracted from the most recent Housing and Population Census of the country, and the multivariate cluster analysis was employed to identify the natural groups or segments. We found that Bangladesh could be classified into three distinct clusters both at district and district town levels based on demographic and socioeconomic factors. The findings of this study would provide insights to the policymakers and researchers for designing and implementing community-based research initiatives, particularly in the area of public health and social science as well as market analysis research. The findings could also be helpful in the situation when the national representation of data is required with budget and time constraints.