All Theses and Dissertations

Degree

Master of Science in Economics

Faculty / School

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Department

Department of Economics

Date of Award

Spring 2020

Advisor

Dr. Qaiser Munir

Committee Member 1

Dr. Qaiser Munir, Faculty of Economics, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi.

Project Type

Thesis

Access Type

Restricted Access

Pages

xii, 33

Abstract

Poverty is multi-faceted with various deprivation dimensions related to man’s capabilities, which include education, health, rights, consumption and security. Mostly, poverty is denying basic human rights. Even though Pakistan has made significant progress in tackling extreme and absolute poverty, its vacillating past due to continuous internal and external shocks has posed great challenges for the country development-wise. The following study attempts to demonstrate vital information on the poor’s traits and their importance in handling poverty at the grass-root levels and designing policies to further reduce poverty. Logit and quantile regressions have been run. Logit regression has been used to find the probability of being poor in relation to certain characteristics of both households and household heads. Quantile regression has been utilized to find regression lines at each quantile and possible significance. To measure inequalities in the country among provincial, regional and gender groups, Gini coefficients, Generalized Entropy Indices, Atkinson Indices and the Foster-Greere Thorbeck measures have all been used. The results indicate that female-headed households in rural areas of Punjab are most likely to face inequalities in consumption distributions. The highest impacting determinants from the regression results are the size of the household, rural regions, access to facilities like internet, garbage collection, toilets, drainage, hand-washing agents and an adequate source of water. The number of rooms in the house were found to be significant as well. The dependency ratio is an important determinant as well with a p-value less than 0.01. In quantile regressions, secondary education is also found to be highly significant at the 20th quintile. These findings indicate that policies to reduce poverty and inequality should be focused on in Pakistan. There are certain linkages and they must be studied for better policy development.

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