Description

Pakistan is considered an outlier as far as poverty dilemma and its growth links are concerned. This book is finding out the dynamics of rural poverty and income inequality in Pakistan while assessing the impact of various factors on poverty status of households along with estimation of pro-poor growth scenarios across time and regions. The short term PEGR reveals that agricultural growth is anti-poor in Pakistan and in all provinces from 1990-91 to 1992-93 and in the subsequent years showed pro-poor growth in rural Pakistan. The regression model reflects that one percent increase in average household income reduces poverty by 0.25 percent at national level. Logit regression revealed that there is great likehood of low incidence of rural poverty with the increase in land use intensity, cropping intensity, agricultural growth, education and number of wage earners in a family. The findings suggest that the government should focus on poverty equivalent growth rate in agriculture sector rather than the actual GDP growth rates. In order to improve PEGR, the poverty alleviation policy must be in tandem with rationalincome distribution.