Critics and experts blamed ineffective and inefficient government policies, political instability and widening inequality for the worsening poverty…writes Dr Sakariya Kareem
Now, over 12 million households in Pakistan will be able to purchase ration and clothes to celebrate the holy festival of Ramadan after the government has decided to provide PKR13,000 to every poor family. The burgeoning poverty has caused a reduction in the intake of necessary food items including grains, dairy and cooking oil, even though the average per capita expenditure on consumption doubled in six years.
Moreover, the rising poverty has destabilised socio-economic parameters, leading to child labour and widening inequalities. The growing poverty aggravated inequalities as economic hardship limited access to education, especially for women. Critics and experts blamed ineffective and inefficient government policies, political instability and widening inequality for the worsening poverty, despite financial and developmental assistance from global institutions.
Acute Food Insecurity (AFI) analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a standardized analytical framework governed by a consortium of international institutions, revealed that high inflation coupled with slow economic growth, created new vulnerabilities. “These include an increase in poverty levels, heightened reliance on debt to meet basic needs, and greater adoption of livelihood-based coping strategies,” it said. “Economic instability has further reduced income opportunities, exacerbating vulnerabilities.”
The average Pakistani household’s expenses on food have reduced to 37 percent of total spending now from 43 percent six years ago, thanks to a rise in other costs and a squeeze in purchasing power. This structural shift in pattern can have serious implications for public welfare and policy, said Bilal I Gilani, Executive Director for Gallup Pakistan. “When combined with falling food quantities and weaker real incomes, this decline likely reflects households cutting back on consumption—a pattern that can fuel undernourishment, especially among children and women,” he said.
Hunger and poverty were spreading, and the poor were becoming poorer, and one-quarter of the population were apprehensive about whether if they could get enough to eat, thanks to declining real incomes since 2021, said Miftah Ismail, former finance minister of Pakistan. He said the current income levels had slumped to the 2010 level as the poor had become 18 percent poorer while the average Pakistani slid to 12 percent poor category in past five-six years.
Children in the country are among the worst affected due to poverty. While poverty compels families to send their children to work, it leads them to fall into intergenerational poverty, said Pakistani author and columnist Mansoor Ahmad. “The persistence of child labour in Pakistan is not primarily a legal failure; it is an economic failure. Poverty remains the strongest driver,” he said. “When adult wages are insufficient to sustain households, children become economic assets.”
The World Bank said Pakistan undid the gains it made in poverty eradication between 2015-2020, as the growth model failed to sustain momentum due to problems with policy and polity. “Pakistan’s once-promising poverty reduction trajectory has come to a troubling halt, reversing years of hard-fought gains. The systemic weaknesses of the growth model are exacerbated by deep-rooted inequalities of opportunity, political instability, elite capture, and vulnerability to climate risks,” reads its assessment report.
A recent World Bank report stated that about 45 percent of the Pakistani population was living under poverty. People were deprived of basic facilities, while a bunch of elites enjoyed privileges with impunity, said educationist Saira Samo. “Pakistan’s decay reflects decades of failed leadership. This is not the result of misfortune or circumstance; it is the cumulative effect of decades of political opportunism, weak governance and leadership that have consistently placed personal or partisan interests above the nation’s welfare,” she said.
Rashid Amjad, a professor at the Lahore School of Economics, said that poverty in Pakistan was unlikely to reduce as the country failed to create new jobs and spur economic growth. “Unfortunately, this did not happen,” he said, adding that the country needed a minimum of 5-6 percent economic growth for poverty eradication. “Indeed, it is highly unlikely, as past experiences in other developing countries and in Pakistan have shown, for an economy to witness increasing economic growth and falling poverty at the same time as it undergoes an IMF stabilisation and reform programme,” said Amjad.
