Rural Poverty in Pakistan: Some Recent Evidence

Abstract

Pakistan's growth record over the past two and a half decades has been impressive. Real income per person has almost doubled. This growth has been spurred on by a vigorous manufacturing sector, sustained by an innovative agricultural sector, and aided in the 1970s by large-scale remittances from Pakistanis in the Middle East. This is no me~ record considering the high 3 percent per annum growth in population. Open unemployment has remained low. Furthermore, increasing real wagerates, brought on by the expanding domestic economy, the strong demand for agricultural labour following the green revolution in the earlier years, and migration of rural workers to the Middle East in the 1970s have managed to spread the gains from this growth. There is a consensus of opinion that this growth has translated into declining levels of poverty especially since the late 1970s [see, for example, de Kruijk and Leeuwen (1985); Malik (1988), Ahmad and Ludlow (1989) and Ercelawn (1989)]. Most studies on poverty in Pakistan are limited to estimating the head-count ratios for single years based on the available Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HIES); the most recent studies use the 19S4-85 data set. The earlier studies were additioinally limited by the grouped nature of the published data from these surveys and by the somewhat arbitrary basis on which poverty lines were set. Only recently, with the easier access to the original household level data tapes and the improving quality of the data sets, has more detailed work been undertaken.