Towards a Taxonomy of the Poor in Pakistan

Poor households are heterogeneous in the circumstances preventing an improvement in their welfare. It is important to understand the nuances within different types of poor households so that critical pathways out of poverty that remedy the variegated sets of constraints they face can be identified and acted on through policy action. This paper attempts to categorize the bottom 40th consumption percentile of households (B40) in Pakistan into different non-overlapping groups using a non-parametric hierarchical cluster analysis, which allows for an empirically driven taxonomy of the poor in the country. Using data from the Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES) 2018-19, we identify five groups among the B40 and explore their salient household and occupational attributes through the lens of an asset framework of shared prosperity