Landlessness and strongRuralstrong Poverty in Pakistan - Pakistan.pdfVIP

Landlessness and Rural Poverty in Pakistan By Talat Anwar, Sarfraz K. Qureshi and Hammad Ali* Abstract Although reducing rural poverty has been the key agenda of economic reforms in Pakistan, the rural poverty continues 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. The rural poor are not homogeneous in terms of their natural or economic environments or their sources of income. The paper uses the most recent household data set available—PIHS 2001-02 to examine the causes of rural poverty and 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% to 48% 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 poverty as poverty level was the highest among the landless households followed by non- agriculture households. The landless households are substantially high in rural areas. About 75% households own no land in the country. Notably 0.05% households own greater than 2 hectares of land in Punjab as well as in Sindh suggesting a highly skewed land ownership pattern. Punjab has the highly