Relative Poverty in Pakistan An Estimation from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (1984-85)

In: The Pakistan development review: PDR, Volume 31, Issue 4II, p. 955-974

Abstract

This paperl operationalises the concept of relative poverty in
the context of Pakistan. The exercise is carried out both at the
national and the provincial level. Basides an estimation of the
incidence of poverty at the aggregate level, the paper provides a
cross-sectional comparison of poverty in different socio-economic groups
in the four provinces of Pakistan. The paper is organised in six
sections. After the introduction, Section II gives a brief theoretical
reflection on the concept and measurment of relative poverty. This
section also describes the methodology followed in this paper. Section
III presents poverty estimates for the country as a whole and Section IV
gives the results for the four provinces of Pakistan. This section also
examines the relationship between the findings at the national level and
the provincial level. Section V presents a brief comparison of high
poverty groups across provinces. Some concluding remarks are given at
the end in Section VI.