MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY DISPARITY IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

It is argued that poverty is more than lack of income and consumption. In other words, unidimensional approach is not able to present true picture of deprivation. As the poor person can be deprived from education, good health, nutritious food and clean drinking water. Therefore, this study aimed to determine multidimensional poverty in Pakistan at provincial, regional level for all available surveys of Pakistan Social and living standard (PSLM). This study covered three dimensions’ education, health and living standard along with nine sub-dimensions. The present study used Alkire foster methodology with different cutoff for rural and urban regions. The result revealed that Pakistan multidimensional poverty index (MPI) in 2004-05 is 0.16 which is slightly decreased to 0.12 in 2019-20. In the same way, head count index showed a little decline of 1 percent i.e. 49% in 2004-05 to 48% in 2019-20. Similarly, intensity of poverty declined from 33% in 2004-05 to 31% in 2019-20.  The empirical analysis showed little improvement in health, education and living condition over the past sixteen years. Further, multidimensional poverty remains higher in rural areas than urban areas. This study identified that the most deprived province is Balochistan among all provinces. From policy perspective government officials can alleviate poverty by providing education and employment opportunities. As it is the basic condition of millennium and sustainable development goals (MDG’s) to give basic needs of life such as food, shelter and education.

Keywords: Multidimensional Poverty, Health, Education, Living Standard.

JEL classification: I1, I2, I3