A new report published by the World Bank (WB) on Tuesday called attention to the rising national poverty rate in Pakistan, highlighting the need for sustained and people-centred reforms to protect vulnerable populations.<\/p>\n
The report<\/a>, titled \u201cReclaiming Momentum Towards Prosperity: Pakistan\u2019s Poverty, Equity and Resilience Assessment\u201d, marks the first comprehensive evaluation of poverty and welfare trends in the country since the early 2000s, according to a WB press release<\/a> today.<\/p>\n According to the release, the national poverty rate has begun to rise again since 2020, after a steady decline from 64.3 per cent in 2001-02 to 21.9pc in 2018-19.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is largely owing to compounding shocks \u2014 including COVID-19, inflation, floods, and macroeconomic stress \u2014 but also because the consumption-driven growth model that delivered early gains has reached its limits,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n The report explored data from 25 years of household surveys, now casted projections, and geospatial analysis, as well as unique sources of administrative data.<\/p>\n The Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES) informed the WB\u2019s official poverty estimates. Beyond the latest available survey round in 2018-19, it used microsimulation models to project estimates, saying that new poverty estimates and trends would be produced after the release of the recently collected HIES 2024-25 data.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The WB found that the reduction of poverty was primarily a result of rising income from non-agricultural labour, with more households moving from farm work to service jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, slow and uneven structural transformation has hindered diversification, job creation, and inclusive growth,\u201d it said, adding that this resulted in low productivity across sectors that constrained income growth. It also pointed out that over 85pc of jobs remained informal and women and youth remained \u201clargely excluded\u201d from the labour force.<\/p>\n Other observations included that nearly 40pc of children were stunted and that a quarter of primary-school-aged children were out of school<\/a>, while 75pc of those attending primary school had very limited reading comprehension skills.<\/p>\n