Defining poverty

Poverty, as in exactly how many of the almost 200 million people in Pakistan qualify as definitively living at or below an agreed definition of poverty, is a political hot potato. It has never been suggested that Pakistan has anything other than a considerable reservoir of ‘poor’ — but the actual number has fluctuated. It is currently — and ludicrously — set at eight per cent, which among other things leads donor nations to conclude that perhaps we do not need quite so much of their largesse after all. Now the government seems prepared to grasp the poverty nettle; and change the methodologies of measurement (again), which may lead to a figure close to 30 per cent of the population defined as living in poverty.



The difference this time around is the inclusion of non-food items in the poverty calculus. Thus a lack of, or limited access to, health and education may be factored in, giving a more holistic picture. The Ministry of Finance and the Planning Commission are going to work together — itself a welcome development — and using a revised formula it is hoped that a new figure will be announced by mid-April. There have been changes in the poverty profile in the last decade, in part a direct result of interventions such as the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) as well as changes in patterns of employment. The latter has produced cyclic poverty, where families and individuals dip in and out of poverty dependent on their employment status, and the level of income relative to basic family needs.

In terms of objective measurement, poverty has become something of a moving target — which is no excuse for not tracking it more effectively than it has been historically. Getting a better measurement of poverty is going to enable a more effective framing of the redistributive responses to the Sustainable Development Goals, which are the successors of the widely missed — in terms of hitting the target — Millennium Development Goals. Slaying the poverty monster is incremental, there is no single solution and is a generational struggle spanning many electoral cycles. Getting the numbers right is as good a place as any to start the battle.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 14^th, 2016.

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