The proposed Family Card program could represent the largest shift in social policy in Bangladesh's history. At Tk 2,500 per month for around 40 million households, the annual cost would be approximately Tk 1.2 trillion — close to 2 percent of GDP.
The central design question is whether the programme should be universal — covering every household — or targeted at the poor and vulnerable. This is not a technical detail. It determines the cost, the administration, the politics, and ultimately the impact.
A universal programme is administratively simpler: there is no need to identify who qualifies, and no household is excluded by mistake. But the fiscal burden is enormous — most of the spending would go to households that do not need it.
A targeted programme concentrates resources where they matter most. But targeting requires accurate identification of beneficiaries, which is difficult, costly, and politically contentious. Exclusion errors — the wrong households left out — can undermine both impact and legitimacy.
The article explores the trade-offs in depth, drawing on evidence from social protection systems around the world, and argues that the right answer for Bangladesh is likely a hybrid — a programme that begins targeted but builds the institutional architecture to expand over time.