Urbanization of multidimensional poverty: empirical evidences from Pakistan

Urban poverty has become an emerging dilemma in the developing countries, which is distinct from rural poverty due to several socio-economic attributes and remained unexplored at the national level. The methodological structure, encircles the absence of multiple domains i.e. health, education and housing services, to offer a deeper and wider understanding of wellbeing. The study estimates the magnitude of multidimensional poverty at regional level in urban Pakistan along with percentage contribution of each sub-group in overall poverty index through adjusted FGT measures on the basis of household integrated economic survey (HIES/PSLM) five data sets (1998–1999, 2001–2002, 2004–2005, 2005–2006 and 2007–2008). The overall incidence of urban poverty at the national level in Pakistan was estimated around 29, 32, 25, 29 and 28 % respectively during the study period. The incidence of multidimensional poverty on average slightly decreased across the regions (administrative divisions) over the span of 10 years, while urbanizing the multidimensional poverty dilemma through increasing the regional proportionate contribution. Meeting the core ideology of millennium development goals, present study emphasis the urbanization of poverty in the multidimensional spectrum at regional level in Pakistan and propose policy inputs to construct poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) and curbing out urbanization of poverty.