Poverty profile of Pakistan

Poverty is a condition in which a person or community is deprived of, or lacks the essentials
for a minimum standard of well-being and life. Since poverty is understood in many senses,
these essentials may be material resources such as food, safe drinking water, and shelter, or
they may be social resources such as access to information, education, health care, social
status, political power, or the opportunity to develop meaningful connections with other
people in society.

In social science poverty is distinguish between social poverty and Pauperism. In Pakistan
and developing world pauperism is focus of researchers. Pauperism denotes ones inability to
maintain at the level conventionally regarded as minimal.

Pakistan's development had a promising start after Independence. Helped by large external
resources Pakistan has been one of the world’s largest recipients of official development
assistance since 1950. The country was able to grow at slightly over 2 percent per capita,
tripling per-capita incomes between 1950 and 1999 and yielding substantial declines in
poverty. After the decades since 1947 Pakistan was successful in reducing poverty. Absolute
poverty, head count ration based on caloric intake, declined from 46.5 percent in 1969-70 to
17 percent in 1987-88. Since then the reversal has taken place till 2001 when it rose to 34
percent. According to government since 2002 are suggestive of improvement around 10
percent point decline in poverty incidence, 29 percent poverty level decline from 2004-05.
The official claim during these three year 10 percent decline in poverty but these must be
supported by other indicators such as sharp rise in real wages, massive reduction in the
inequality and unemployment rates. The general impression as well as our finding is that
these variables fail to support the official claim.
1998-98 planning commission of Pakistan suggested an official poverty line in term of
minimum caloric requirement per adult (2350 per day) and the needed expenditure of Rs. 670
per person for that year.

The research shows that poverty levels are higher in rural areas then in the urban areas. The
rural population accounts two third of the total majority of poor live in rural area.

Pakistan have four province they are mostly defined on the basis of ethnicity. Thus Punjab
and Sindh provinces have rich agricultural resources base as well as both are more developed
compared to resource poor and less developed provinces of NWFP and Baluchistan. The
general poverty incidence at the provincial level tend to fluctuate. While Baluchistan was
least poor in 1998-99, a status acquired by Punjab in 2001-02 and Sindh in 2004-05. Further
classification in terms of urban and rural areas teds to suggest that the urban Sindh emerged
to be the least poor for all the three years under study. A closer perusal of the table also
indicates that improvement in poverty situation was mostly confined to Sindh province
during 2002-02 to 2004-4-05, the other provinces did not share this gain rather the situation
in Baluchistan province worsened during the same period.

It observed that there were efforts made to eradicate the poverty but those efforts were
useless. There are main factors for poverty. First of all political system. It is hard to find the
political stability. They must be strong political system in Pakistan. This could be the main
reason of poverty increase. Resources are under utilise, particularly human resources and
other resources. The population growth is the main cause of poverty in Pakistan. There is
feudal system one of major causes of poverty in Pakistan because there in unequal
distribution of land. To reduce the poverty there is need of land reforms and stability of
political polices and fair political system and need of population control program.

Tables

Incidence of poverty by Rural/urban

World Over all Urban Areas Rural Areas

1998- 2000- 2004- 1998- 2000- 2004- 1998- 2000- 2004-
Bank(2006
99 01 05 99 01 05 99 01 05
)
Punjab 29.8 30.7 29.5 23.7 23.0 21.1 32.2 33.8 33.4
Sindh 26.2 37.5 22.4 15.3 20.7 13.8 34.5 48.3 28.9
NWFP 40.8 41.2 39.3 26.1 300.0 26.1 43.3 44.4 41.9
Baluchistan 22.1 37.2 32.9 25.2 27.4 21.5 21.6 39.3 35.8

Trends in Poverty Indicators

Year Headcount Poverty Gap Severity of Poverty
Urban Rural Pakista Urban Rural Pakistan Urban Rural Pakistan

n
1998- 20.9 34.7 30.6 4.3 7.6 6.4 1.3 2.4 2.0

99
2000- 22.7 39.3 34.5 4.6 8.0 7.0 1.4 2.4 2.1

01
2004- 14.9 28.11 23.9 2.9 5.6 4.8 0.8 1.8 1.5

05
2005- 13.1 27.0 22.3 2.1 5.0 4.0 0.5 1.4 1.1

06