Characteristics of Poverty In Pakistan

Poverty is a multidimensional conception and usually it is defined by focusing narrowly on income poverty or broadly by including lack of access to opportunities for raising standards of living. Strategies aimed at poverty reduction need to identify factors that are strongly associated with poverty and agreeable to modification by policy. This study uses integrated Household Survey (2009-10) data collected by Federal Bureau of Statistics Pakistan to examine probable determinants of poverty status, employing bivariate models. In general, this study tries to seek in depth knowledge of the key factors like demographic factors and human capital variables that account for poverty differentials in Pakistan. The demographic variables show significant impact on poverty status of the household, especially dependency ratio, sex of the head of the household, family type and household size. These all are found to be of supreme important in defining poverty. The educational attainment of the head of the household is also found to be very important factor that is associated with poverty. If policy makers target the education of head of household in order to get rid of this evil vicious circle of poverty then it might be establish more effective, powerful and sustainable tool. Keywords; Poverty status, Demographic variables, human capital variables, Poverty Differential