Pakistan has made an impressive progress in reducing absolute poverty and improving shared prosperity, but despite the progress, an estimated 23 million people, 13% of the population, live on an amount between $1.25 and $1.50 per day, World Bank (WB) reported.Reviewing the country’s performance, WB said in its recent report that the proportion of the population below the national poverty rate has fallen from 34.7% in Financial Year 2002 (FY02) to an estimated 12.4% in FY11. But, future efforts are needed to improve poverty monitoring and policy evaluation, it added. The report stated that the country has already achieved the first millennium development goal (MDG) by more than halving, between 1991 and 2011, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1.25 a day. Furthermore, it said growth in the real per capita consumption of the bottom 40% was a respectable 3% between 2006 and 2011. “Poverty reduction has been strongest in the traditionally poorer provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Sindh, where poverty rates are now indistinguishable from those in Punjab. Poverty remains much more prevalent in Balochistan, however, where a sizeable portion of residents are nomadic and live in remote and conflict-affected areas,” it added. The most apparent problem with this design is that the WB has drawn an arbitrary line of dollar $1.25 a day as the benchmark for classifying ‘poor’ and ‘non-poor’ people. This figure amounts to about 130 rupees and is clearly far too low to be used as a benchmark for living within one’s means. The poverty line is therefore completely divorced from reality: rising inflation centred on increasing food prices, lack of access to health services and high cost of utilities. The fact that in many households there is only one bread earner means this figure has to provide for multiple family members. To assume that those living marginally above this line are not poor is ridiculous to the point of being laughable. It is impossible to rationally conclude poverty is on the downward slope when people are finding it increasingly hard to get work and their purchasing power keeps on decreasing. Reliance on head count measures based on an easily adjustable arbitrary line in order to achieve favourable results is an exercise in deception, to say nothing of the fact that the WB relies on official figures to paint this questionably ‘rosy’ picture, when most independent economists scoff at their unreliability. Rather than playing games of statistical manipulation, the focus should be on actually solving the problems that afflict a majority of the population, including those conveniently classified as ‘non-poor’.
pk.shafaqna.com
