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...

Changes in the extent of poverty are affected not only by growth in the mean income but also by changes in the distribution of income. The effect of these two factors can be separately measured by decomposing the total change in poverty. In this context, this paper uses new tools to quantify...

This paper examines the concept of inclusive growth, compares and contrasts it with related concepts such as pro-poor growth and equitable growth, and analyses the recent experience of South Asia through the lens of this concept. A common experience of the region is that spells of rapid growth...

The approach to measure poverty in terms of financial deprivation has been widely criticised in the literature of welfare and wellbeing. It is argued that to understand the complex phenomenon of poverty or to evaluate household or individual wellbeing, a multidimensional exercise is imperative....

In this paper, the concept of vulnerability of the poor’s welfare and its practical measures are scrutinised in order to derive implications for targeting poverty reduction policies toward vulnerable households. As illustration, various measures of vulnerability proposed in the literature are...

There is a widespread impression among the Indian intelligentsia, foreign scholars, and residents of developed/rich countries that India’s economic growth has not reduced poverty, that globalisation has worsened poverty and/or income distribution, and that there are hundreds of millions of...

This paper explores the impact of two shocks, trade liberalisation policies and decline in remittances, on welfare and poverty in Pakistan. It begins by reviewing the economy, which reveals that during the Nineties although import tariffs were reduced by 55 percent, poverty however remained...

This paper analyses the incidence of chronic and transitory poverty in Pakistan in both urban and rural settings. The findings are that rural poverty is severer and also chronic as compared to transitory poverty in urban centres. The main factor behind this phenomenon is the homogeneity of the...

This study analyses the trends in polarisation in Pakistan, in its rural and urban segments and its provinces, at the micro level during the period 1992-93 to 2001-02. Estimations are made by using the Bossert-Schworm measure (2006). The study finds fluctuating trends. In general, polarisation...