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There is sample evidence that poverty which declined rapidly
in Pakistan in the 1970s and 1980s has increased in the 1990s.1 This
rise in poverty is likely to have adversely affected the ability of poor
households to enrol their young children in schools. The cost of
schooling even when it is free is usually the most pressing obstacles
for poor people to send their children in school. Similarly, health
correlates strongly with poverty. This does not mean that poverty is
itself a direct cause of diseases, but it lies behind other causes of
disease such as in-sanitary living conditions, lack of adequate
nutrition, poor access to safe drinking water, and sanitation and bad
working conditions [World Bank (1993)]. Because of these factors, the
poor are more affected by communicable diseases than are the rich. They
have also less access to modern health facilities. This paper examines
recent trends in poverty and their impact on primary school enrolment,
health status and housing conditions in Pakistan.

This study aims, first, to assess unemployment levels among
both return migrants and non-migrants and, second, to examine the
reintegration pattern of returnees in the domestic labour market. The
study has used three data sets: the 1980 PIDE/World Bank Survey of
Return Migrant Households, the 1986 ILO/ARTEP Survey of Return Migrant
Households, and the 1991 Pakistan Integrated Household Survey. The
results show that unemployment rates are much higher among return
migrants than among non-migrants. Although this difference has narrowed
with the passage of time, even among those who returned to Pakistan at
least 18 months prior to the surveys, more than 10 percent of workers
are unemployed. The multivariate analysis further shows that returnees,
irrespective of the period elapsed since their return, are more likely
to be unemployed than non-migrants. With respect to the reintegration
pattern of return migrants, the study reveals that the variables
indicating their human capital such as occupation and premigration and
during-migration work experience appear to have greater influence on
their re-absorption than the variables related to economic positions
such as savings. The possibility is that unemployed returnees can not
save enough from their overseas earnings to become self-employed.
Provision of credit for self-employment seems to be the right way to
accommodate these workers. The study also shows that the majority of
workers who are able to find employment on return are satisfied with
their post-return jobs and income levels, suggesting their successful
reintegration in the domestic labour market.

Poverty analysis in developing countries including Pakistan
has in general focused on poverty trends based on cross-sectional
datasets, with very little attention being paid to dynamics—of
transitory or chronic poverty. Transitory poor are those who move out or
fall into poverty between two or more points of time whereas the chronic
poor remain in the poverty trap for a significant period of their lives.
The static measures of households' standard of living do not necessarily
provide a good insight into their likely stability over time. For
instance, a high mobility into or out of poverty may suggest that a
higher proportion of a population experiences poverty over time than
what the cross-sectional data might show. 1 It also implies that a much
smaller proportion of the population experiences chronic poverty
contrary to the results of cross-sectional datasets in a particular year
[Hossain and Bayes (2010)]. Thus, the analysis of poverty dynamics is
important to uncover the true nature of wellbeing of population. Both
the micro and macro level socio-demographic and economic factors are
likely to affect poverty movements and intergenerational poverty
transmission [Krishna (2011)].

There is convincing evidence that Pakistan has entered the
demographic bonus phase; child dependency is declining and youth share
in the total population is rising. This paper has examined youth
employment in the context of demographic transition evidenced since the
early 1990s. Changes in the level of educational attainment have also
been analysed. The study has used the data from Pakistan Demographic
Surveys and Labour Force Surveys carried out between 1990 and 2005.
Findings of the study show that the benefits of demographic transition
in terms of rising share of youth in the total population has partially
been translated through development of their human capital and
productive absorption in the local labour market. While the pace of
human capital formation seems to be satisfactory in urban Pakistan, it
is dismal in rural areas, particularly for females. High levels of both
female inactivity across the education categories and unemployment for
males as well as females urge a strong youth employment policy in
Pakistan to reap the benefits of the ongoing demographic transition.
Youth are a source of development, and a high priority may be placed on
preparing them with the skills needed for their adjustment in the labour
market.

The current level of urbanisation in Pakistan, approximately
33 percent in 1998, is not high by global standards.1 But it is commonly
linked with unemployment, underemployment, shortage of housing,
transport and other infrastructure like water supply and sewerage.
Compared to other areas of population dynamics, such as fertility and
mortality, studies in the field of urbanisation and internal migration
in Pakistan are rather limited. During the last three decades hardly
half a dozen studies could be added in the field of urbanisation. These
studies are primarily based on data generated by the different
censuses.2 After the 1979 Population Labour Force and Migration (PLM)
Survey, no nationally representative survey addressing the issue of
urbanisation and internal migration could be carried out. Even regional
studies could not be conducted during the last two decades.

The present study used the 1995-96 Pakistan Integrated
Household Survey data to determine the socio-economic, demographic, and
environmental covariates of both prevalence and duration of diarrhoea
among children under five in Pakistan. Seven logit models were estimated
to determine factors influencing the probability of occurrence of
diarrhoea. Seven Proportional Hazards Models were used to examine
factors determining the duration of diarrhoea. Results revealed that
around 20 percent of children under five suffered from diarrhoea in the
30 days prior to the survey. Child's age was negatively associated with
diarrhoea morbidity. Children who had measles immunisation were less
likely than children without this immunisation to have diarrhoea. The
study also revealed that in controlling the occurrence of diarrhoea
among children, sanitation facilities seemed to be more important than
the supply of drinking-water. With respect to the duration of diarrhoea,
the hazard models showed that younger children, particularly under the
age of two, were relatively at a greater risk to suffer from longer
diarrhoea episode. The use of Nimkol (ORT) showed a significant and
positive effect on recovering quickly from the diarrhoea morbidity. The
findings of the study suggest that mothers should be given health
education so that they are familiar with the simply prepared treatment,
Nimkol, and have knowledge about personal hygiene, and specially of
preparing supplementary foods for children.

This paper describes population mobility across borders
experienced by Pakistan during the past fifty years. Some consequences
of this mobility have also been briefly mentioned. The dichotomy of this
population mobility into inward and outward flow reveals that while the
former can be traced to political factors like the partition of the
Subcontinent and the Afghan war, the latter mostly represents a
job-oriented move. Every flow is associated with its own set of effects,
difficult to be encompassed by a single research exercise. Migration
from India in the wake of partition is associated with a higher level of
urbanisation and a rise in religious homogeneity associated at the same
time with increased ethnic diversity, which according to some can be
linked with the current Karachi situation. Pakistan also engaged in
manpower export and experienced brain-drain. Both of these outward
flows, to some extent rooted in history, have particular effects for the
society and economy. These differences emanate from the pattern of
permanent or temporary settlement abroad, characteristics of the
emigrants particularly in terms of human capital endowments. and the
nature of links maintained with families in Pakistan which have a
bearing on the inflow of remittances. Illegal migration to Pakistan from
the surrounding countries is alleged to be substantial at present. The
ease with which the identity cards and passports of Pakistan are
acquired by these illegal migrants simply reveals the level of control
and the standard of honesty prevailing in the situation. In this
context, the importance of peace and economic stability in the
neighbouring countries emerges to be quite obvious for
Pakistan.

This paper examines the factors affecting occupational
composition of Pakistani workers upon their return from Middle East
employment by using the 1986 ILO/ARTEP Survey of Return Migrant
Households. In view of the concentration of workers in lowstatus
occupations prior to migration, there was a great incentive for them to
change these occupations after return. The study shows that the economic
resources gained from overseas employment gave migrants the strength to
seek independent employment, and there was a clear move out of the
production-service occupations into business and agriculture
occupations. This movement was strongly related to migrants' length of
stay in the Middle East. Since the occupational structure of the general
population remained almost unchanged in the 1970s and 1980s, the
employment trends exhibited by return migrants could largely be
attributed to overseas migration. However, the study shows that
businesses and farms established by migrant workers were
small-scale.

The socio-economic databases in Pakistan, as in most
countries, can be classified into three broad categories, namely
registration-based statistics, data produced by different population
censuses and household survey-based data. The registration system of
births and deaths in Pakistan has historically been inadequate [Afzal
and Ahmed (1974)] and the population censuses have not been carried out
regularly. The household surveys such as Pakistan Demographic Survey
(PDS), Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Household Income Expenditure Survey
(HIES) have been periodically conducted since the 1960s. These surveys
have filled the data gaps created by the weak registration system and
the irregularity in conducting censuses. The data generated by the
household surveys have also enabled social scientists to examine a wide
range of issues, including natural increase in population, education,
employment, poverty, health, nutrition, and housing. All these surveys
are, however, cross-sectional in nature so it is not possible to gauge
the dynamics of these social and economic processes, for example the
transition from school to labour market, movement into or out of
poverty, movement of labour from one state of employment to another. A
proper understanding of such dynamics requires longitudinal or panel
datasets where the same households are visited over time. Since panel
surveys are complex and expensive to carry out, they are not as commonly
conducted as the cross-sectional surveys anywhere in the world and in
Pakistan they are even rarer

The share of private and NGO schools in primary education has
substantially increased over time, though the public sector is still a
major player in this area. The present study analyses the factors
determining the quality of education offered by the three types of
schools and draws policy recommendations for improving primary education
in Pakistan. The study compares learning achievement of Class 4 students
enrolled in 50 public, private, and NGO schools located across six
districts of Pakistan and in Azad Kashmir in terms of their scores in
Mathematics, Urdu, and General Knowledge tests. The analysis shows that,
practically, there is no gap between public and NGO schools in terms of
the test scores of their students. However, a significant test score gap
was found between the students enrolled in public and private schools.
This gap was largely explained by family background and school-related
variables, including teachers' qualification and student/teacher ratio.
However, the performance of private schools was not uniform across
districts. In some districts public schools performed even better than
private and NGO schools. The findings of this study highlight the need
for improving the quality of education in public schools by recruiting
more qualified teachers and improving overall supervision. Teacher
training is the area where the public and private sectors can benefit by
pooling their resources and expertise.

There is ample evidence that poverty, which declined rapidly
in Pakistan in the 1980s, has returned in the 1990s [Amjad and Kemal
(1997); Ali and Tahir (1999); Jafri (1999); Qureshi and Arif (2001)].
Consequently large number of Pakistanis, more than one-third of the
total population, live currently far below what can reasonably be
regarded as a decent standard of living. Poverty has generally been
higher in rural areas than in urban areas. This gap could not be bridged
overtime; still the greatest degree of poverty is found in the
countryside. To address rural poverty, policy-makers have long been
looking to the growth potential of the farm sector of the rural economy.
Non-agricultural activities in rural areas have received little
attention. This neglect, however, may be socially costly. It has been
shown in several recent empirical studies that nonfarm activities occupy
an important place in rural economies throughout the developing world
[Hazell and Haggblade (1993); Adams and He (1995); Bakht (1996); Sen
(1996); Lanjouw (1999)]. They expand quite rapidly in response to
agriculture development, and therefore merit special attention in the
design of strategies concerning poverty alleviation in rural
areas.

With the year 2015 fast approaching, Pakistan is not likely to
achieve most of the health targets set in the Millennium Development
Goals [Pakistan (2010)]. High levels of child and maternal mortality and
child malnutrition are among the major health challenges facing the
country. Along with this enhanced vulnerability for children and women
there is also an economic divide in the society because these health
challenges are more profound for the poor segment of the population than
for the better off. Another divide is between the rural and urban
populations due to concentration of health facilities in urban centres
of the country. The high cost of dealing with health issues adversely
affects the poor and rural population, lowering their productivity and
limiting their lifetime achievements. Without substantially improved
health outcomes it is impossible to break out of the cycle of poverty
[OECD (2003)].

The role of economic factors, particularly income and
consumption, in the wellbeing of a population is well documented. The
well-being, however, does not depend solely on these factors, social
indicators such as life expectancy, health, education and nutrition
serve an important complementary function [Linnemayr, et al. (2008)].
The most significant social problems in many developing countries
including Pakistan are widespread child malnutrition, high infant
mortality and low literacy. Child malnutrition is considered as the key
risk factor for illness and death, contributing to more than half the
deaths of children globally [Cheah, et al. (2010)]. It also affects the
child morbidity rate and poses threat to their physical and mental
development, which results in lower level of educational attainment
[Chirwa and Ngalawa (2008)]. The recent literature therefore considers
the nutrition status as an important dimension of individual wellbeing
[Babatunde, Olagunju, and Fakayode (2011)].

The bulk of research on labour market conditions in Pakistan
has concentrated on the economic activity rate, the number of employed
persons, or the unemployment rate at a particular point in time. These
stock measures of labour market situation are useful from a policy
viewpoint as they give a broad indication of the dimension of the
problem. For example, the recent labour force surveys show an increase
in the level of open unemployment from 5.9 percent in 1997-98 to 7.8
percent in 1999-2000 [Pakistan (2001)]. There is also an emerging
consensus that during the 1990s poverty has increased at the national as
well as for rural and urban areas of the country [Qureshi and Arif
(2001)]. Labour market is considered as the main route for establishing
the link between macro policies, the resulting GDP growth and poverty
alleviation [Rahman (2002)]. Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
(IPRSP) and other development plans have suggested various targets of
employment creation for poverty reduction.