Poverty in rural Pakistan

The major aim of this chapter is to extend the poverty studies of the sixties into the seventies, it also re-examines the evidence on rural poverty for the sixties, supplementing the results with new evidence where available, mainly to see whether the conclusions reached by earlier authors were in fact justified. An examination of the trends in rural poverty into the seventies has gained additional importance for a number of reasons. It could be argued, with some merit, that since the major increases in agricultural production took place in the latter half of the sixties (mainly after 1966) the time period covered by the earlier studies, i.e. till 1971/72 was not long enough to evaluate its "spill over" effect on rural poverty. The early seventies also saw the introduction of structural changes mainly in the form of land and tenancy reforms by the then government. As compared to the sixties agricultural growth drastically slowed down although there was a sharp recovery toward the end of the seventies. In the second half of the seventies there took place the phenomenon of overseas migration leading to a significant outflow of the labour force and large inflows of foreign remittances. These factors could have had an important impact on the extent and trend in rural poverty in the seventies.