The paper provides a consistent time-series of poverty
 estimates for the period 1963- 64 to 1992-93 for both the rural as well
 as the urban areas, examines the influence of macroeconomic policies on
 the poverty levels, analyses the impact of Structural Adjustment
 Programmes on the levels of poverty, and suggests a strategy for poverty
 alleviation in Pakistan. The paper explores in particular the influence
 on poverty of such factors as economic growth, agricultural growth,
 terms of trade for the agriculture sector, industrial production, rate
 of inflation, employment, wages, remittances, and the tax structure.
 While the paper cautions that on account of the limited number of
 observations the results of the study should be interpreted cautiously,
 the study does suggest that the growth above a threshold level of about
 5 percent, increase in employment, and remittances are the most
 important variables explaining the change in poverty over time. The
 paper also comes to the conclusion that the policies pursued under the
 Structural Adjustment Programme have tended to increase the poverty
 levels mainly because of decline in growth rates, withdrawal of
 subsidies on agricultural inputs and consumption, decline in employment,
 increase in indirect taxes, and decline in public expenditure on social
 services. The paper also outlines a strategy for poverty eradication and
 argues that besides the safety nets, the employment programmes, as well
 as promotion of informal sector enterprises, are essential.

http://www.thepdr.pk/pdr/index.php/pdr/article/download/1459/1459

Macroeconomic Policies and their Impact on Poverty Alleviation in Pakistan

Integration of global markets has highlighted the issue of economic competitiveness, the base line to attract the foreign direct investment. In this increasingly globalized and interdependent world economy, knowledge and skills of workforce will be the key competitive weapons of nations and thus should be focused for enhancement of the economic competitiveness (Thurow, 1994). The current study focuses on the role of human resource management as a tool to improve the economic competitiveness of South Asian region in general and Pakistan in particular and hence attracting the foreign capital inflow to boost the economic growth.

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Pakistan Economic and Social Review

The question of appropriate factor proportions for less developed countries (LDCs) has emerged as an important area for research and for policy in the 1970s. High and rising rates of urban unemployment, the slow growth of employment in manufacturing, and high and rising capital-labor ratios are occurring simultaneously in many LDCs. It is frequently argued that the first two phenomena are caused by the last; that there are no efficient alternatives to the modern capital-intensive technology of the rich industrial nations; and that drastic, nonmarket solutions offer the only hope for the LDCs' employment and unemployment problems. Though many economists believe that efficient alternatives do exist, there are still some skeptics within the profession (or at least some who believe that the alternatives are quite limited) and many noneconomist policymakers who believe that fixed proportions (i.e., current Western technology) describe the only efficient technology available for LDCs. Over the past 15 years there has been a significant accumulation of evidence bearing on this question, but there has been no systematic gathering and analysis of this evidence.' That will be the major task of this paper.

The Evidence on Appropriate Factor Proportions for Manufacturing in Less Developed Countries: A Survey

The relationship between growth, inequality, and poverty has
 been a moot point. On the one hand growth is considered central or the
 best course to reduce poverty (e.g. World Development Report 1990) with
 the preconditions that access to education, health, and social services
 are available to all by means of other policies. On the other hand,
 there is a realisation that growth, inequality, and poverty relations
 are non-linear, complex, and path dependent in their dynamics. An
 important point made in this context by Kuznets (1955) was the empirical
 finding of an inverted U (arch) shape relationship between growth and
 inequality which suggested that the inequality would increase with
 growth in the beginning, but will decline at higher levels of growth as
 the benefits of growth trickle down to lower income strata. This
 argument has been debated since then in the literature with empirical
 support gathered for and against this hypothesis. Recent theoretical
 literature on the issue tries to find the micro-foundations of the
 dynamical relations between these three variables (see for example,
 proceedings of the 5th ABCDE Annual (World) Bank Conference on
 Development Economics).

/pdf/dynamics-of-growth-poverty-and-inequality-in-pakistan-3mmapmjlba.pdf

Dynamics of Growth, Poverty, and Inequality in Pakistan

Although reducing rural poverty has been the key agenda of economic reforms in Pakistan, the rural poverty continued to rise during the 1990s. The causes of rural poverty are complex and multidimensional. The rural poor are quite diverse both in the problems they face, and the possible solutions to these problems are also different. The paper uses the most recent household data set available—PIHS 2001-02—to examine the causes of rural poverty, as to what accounts for its persistence and what policy measures should be taken to alleviate it. Poverty estimates using official poverty line suggest the high prevalence of rural poverty ranging from 39 percent to 48 percent in all provinces. Rural poverty is found to be strongly correlated with lack of asset in rural areas. The unequal land ownership in the country is found to be one of the major causes of rural poverty, as poverty level was the highest among the landless households followed by non-agriculture households. The incidence of landlessness is common in rural areas. About 67 percent households own no land in the country. Unusually, just 0.3 percent households own 55 and above acres of land across the country, suggesting a highly skewed landownership pattern. Gini Coefficient of landholding suggests that Punjab has the most unequal landownership pattern, followed by the NWFP, Sindh, and Balochistan. The highly unequal land distribution seems to have resulted in tenancy arrangements such as sharecropping, resulting in high prevalence of absolute poverty particularly in Sindh. A broad-based land reform programme, including land redistribution and fair and enforceable tenancy contracts together with rural public works programmes and access to credit, is critical to reducing rural poverty in Pakistan.

Landlessness and Rural Poverty in Pakistan

Despite great development efforts made in Pakistan1 during the
 last twenty-five years, the extent of poverty in the country has
 remained shockingly great and the living standards of the masses
 alarmingly low. The interest in the study of the mass poverty problem is
 of recent origin in Pakistan. Earlier studies have examined the problem
 mainly from the point of view of an equit¬able distribution of income
 and wealth and their analysis has been principally based on their
 relative shares. However, one study [6] deals with the specific problem
 of mass poverty in Pakistan, taking into account the absolute levels.
 The study, done by Naseem, analyses consumption expenditure of the
 masses by making use of the Household Income and Expenditure Survey [9]
 data for the years 1963-64, 1966-67, 1968-69 and 1969-70. Since then,
 many changes have occurred in Pakistan's economy as a result of which
 the per capita GNP declined during the last two years covered by this
 study, viz. 1970-71 and 1971-72. Since expenditure, as a measure of
 welfare, may not be very appropriate in a year in which income declines,
 for part of the expenditure might be financed by dissavings and sales of
 assets, the analysis for this paper is based on both expendi¬ture and
 income levels. Moreover, as the estimation of poverty levels, to a great
 extent, involves, besides other things, value judgment, it is more
 appro¬priate to specify a range of income and expenditure values rather
 than specific values. For this reason, the study makes use of four
 levels of income and expenditures, instead of the two adopted in
 Naseem's study [6], below each of which the number of the poor is
 estimated.

http://thepdr.pk/pdr/index.php/pdr/article/viewFile/399/399

Mass Poverty in Pakistan - A Further Study

It is a well-known fact that capital is scarce in most of the developing countries and thus some of the production factors, such as labour, remain -unemployed, leading toa lower growth rate of G.N.P. than would be possible under. full employment. Additions to the stock of capital not only increase the rate of growth but also provide new job opportunities. However, in many developing countries, capital is utilised less than one-third of the time [10,p.381. The underutilization of capital obviously shrinks the growth rate of less developed countries still fUrther. Capacity underutilization discourages technological progress which leads to an inefficient industrial structure. This presents uS with a paradox: if capital is scarce in developing countries, why is it underutilized

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Talat Alauddin

Papers

Mass Poverty in Pakistan - A Further Study

Capacity Utilization in Manufacturing Industries of Pakistan