5.87 Billion People in Pakistan are living a life below the poverty line. 46 percent of this poverty is present in rural areas while 18 percent happens to be in urban areas of Pakistan.
The survey report “Clustered Deprivation” is released by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI). United Nation Development Program (UNDP) also helped financially as well as provided technical assistance to SDPI for completion of this survey report.
SDPI measures poverty using five dimensions – health, sanitation and water supply, education, household assets and satisfaction to service delivery. In addition a person earning less than 1.25 dollars per day and manage to take less than 2,350 calories per day is considered living a life below poverty standards according to the standards set by the United Nations.
Balochistan tops the rank with 52 percent people living below the line of poverty, Sindh ranks second with 33 percent people, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa follows at third position with 32 percent and Punjab has 19 percent people and it is at the fourth position as far as poverty is concerned.
Southern districts of Punjab are the most poverty-hit areas in whole Punjab. Rajanpur is at the top of the list for Punjab as 44 percent of the households in Rajanpur fall below the line of poverty. Muzaffargarh is having 40 percent households below poverty line, DG Khan is having 36 percent households below poverty line while Bahawalpur has 33 percent. Layyah, Lodhran and Pakpattan has 31 percent while Multan, Khanewal and Bhakkar districts have 28 percent of households under poverty line.
Most prominent areas in Balochistan that are affected by poverty are Muskhel and most of the central and southwest area of the province.
Northern mountainous regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are highly affected by poverty while the districts adjacent to Islamabad have relatively lower levels of poverty.
Southeast part of Sindh is most poverty struck region as compared to the southwest Sindh which is the least poverty struck area. Tharparkar has the worst situation as 47 percent of the households are below the poverty line, 42 percent in Badin, 41 percent in Tando Muhammad Khan, 40 percent in Thatta while Nawabshah and Jamshoro share 39 percent poverty in the households.
The information in the survey report can be summarized as one-third of Pakistani household are below the poverty line and have a variable distribution among all the provinces and rural and urban population. Balochistan is the poorest province of Pakistan with half of the poverty-struck population of Pakistan living in this province.
