By Munir Ahmed
Poverty is widespread in the many mountainous parts of Pakistan where communities are small, scattered, and isolated. The rugged terrain and the fragile ecosystems together with lack of access to markets and services make cultivation and agriculture difficult and contribute to chronic poverty in these areas.
Other causes of the poverty include lack of education, poor access to health services, high dependency rates, gender discrimination, vulnerability to environmental degradation, and deterioration of the natural resource base. Although women play a major role in the household economy and in caring for their families, they are particularly vulnerable. Women own fewer assets, and have limited economic options and less access to social services.
These facts are stated in a study ‘Understanding Mountain Poverty in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas’, conducted and published by the Kathmandu (Nepal) based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), last month.
The analysis was based on the data collected by the Federal Bureau of Statistics of Pakistan for the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey (PSLM) 2005-06. The Rural Community Survey 2005-06, which covered 570 communities, was used for information about infrastructure and access to services and basic facilities.
Poverty trends
Though the study is based on a little older data, it shows some alarming facts. “Approximately 25 per cent of Pakistan’s population was living below the poverty line, with a higher proportion in the mountain areas. Some 32 per cent of the mountain population, 11 million people, are living below the poverty line, while it is lower in the plains (24 per cent). The poverty rate was lower overall in urban areas than in rural areas (13 per cent compared to 31 per cent respectively), but considerably higher in urban mountain areas than in urban plains areas, in line with the overall trend. The rural mountains had the largest proportion of the population living below the poverty line (34 per cent).
Differences within
Considerable differences were observed within the mountain and hill area with the three divisions of Hazara, Kohat, and Quetta better off than the mountain average. The three divisions, Makran, Kalat, and Zhob, are considerably worse off. Kalat and Zhob had almost twice the proportion of households living below the poverty line as the mountain average that is 58 and 60 per cent as compared to 32 per cent of overall and close to four times the proportion in the best off division of Hazara, 15 per cent.
Determinants of poverty
The determinants of poverty in different regions was analysed to help understand which components contribute to the higher rates of poverty in the mountains.
The first and foremost is the access to basic facilities that has a strong positive effect on wellbeing. The households in rural mountain areas had better access to basic facilities than those in the plains. More people in the mountains have access to electricity because there are a large number of small-scale hydroelectric generators in these areas operated by local individuals and local community groups.
Poor accessibility has increased the probability of falling below the poverty line. All the indicators of inaccessibility were higher in the rural mountains. Rural mountain people had to travel 14 km on average to use a phone, compared to less than 2 km in the rural plains, and 11 km to a mill, compared with less than 1 km in the plains.
Agricultural assets explained 3 per cent of the probability of falling below the poverty line. The value of livestock per head had a negative effect on poverty. Livestock assets equivalent to Rs 1,000 in market value lowered the risk of falling below the poverty line by 1 per cent. However, the amount of land owned per head had no significant impact.
Having a woman head of household decreased the probability of falling below the poverty line by 22 per cent. This may be partly because female-headed households are more likely to receive remittances from migrant members. There were more female-headed households in the rural mountains (11 per cent) than the rural plains (9 per cent), possibly for lack of alternative opportunities locally that encourage more men to migrate for work.
Having a high number of dependents within a household puts additional strain on the earners; high dependency rates increased the probability of falling below the poverty line by 15 per cent, but the dependency rate was only slightly higher in the rural mountains than elsewhere.
Social status
There were more uneducated heads of household in rural mountains than in the rural plains. Access to schooling is more restricted in the mountain areas, and poor households are often faced with the difficult choice between spending on schooling and covering other basic household needs.
There is also an opportunity cost in sending children to school instead of using their time to help out with the household and agricultural workload. Having a household with no literate household members increased the probability of falling below the poverty line by 21 per cent as compared to a household with one or more literate members.
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