Around 39% Pakistanis living below poverty line: Report

ISLAMABAD (92 News) – As Pakistan’s first ever official report on poverty launched here on Monday, country’s 39 percent population is living below poverty line as 7 million out of 19 million lack basic facilities including education, health and employment. Pakistan has released the report complied with technical support from United Nations, UNDP Pakistan and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford. The report launched by the Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform, details Pakistan’s official Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) which was earlier published in the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2015-16. Poverty in urban areas is 9.3 percent as compared to 54.6 percent in rural areas. Disparities also exist across provinces. The report recorded the poverty rates in Balochistan at 55.3 percent, Sindh at 53.5 percent, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 50.7 percent and Punjab at 48.4 percent. There are severe difference between districts: Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi have less than 10 percent multidimensional poverty, while Qila Abadullah, Harnai and Barkhan, all in Balochistan, have more than 90 percent poverty. The report also found that the decrease in multidimensional poverty was slowest in Balochistan, while poverty levels had actually increased in several districts in Balochistan and Sindh during the past decade. The level and composition of multidimensional poverty for each of Pakistan’s 114 districts are also covered in this report.