DEPRIVATION AND THE STRUCTURE OF URBAN POVERTY IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

The burden of global poverty is spread unevenly among regions of the developirg world; among countries within those regions and among localities among those countries. Nearly half of the world's poor live in South Asia, a region that accounts for roughly 30% of the world's population. No task should, therefore, command higher priority for policy makers than that of reducing poverty which of course, is the fundamental objective of all economic development. Knowledge about the poor is essential if governments are to adopt sound development strategies and effective policies for attacking poverty. The large proportion of work on poverty in Pakistan has been targetted towards determining absolute levels and extent of poverty in rural/ agrarian economies in the attempt to identify the effects, if any, of the 1960's 'Green Revolution' on poverty levels and income disparities in those areas. There is no question, however, that the world's future is an increasingly urban one. Cities already account for 60-80% of the GNP of developing countries. They provide capital, labour and markets for entrepreneurs at all levels of economic activity. Of the world's urban population (currently 2.6 billion people), 1.7 billion of them reside in developing nations; yet a third of today's urban population, some 600 million people, do not have the means to meet their basic needsl • In an attempt, therefore, to analyse the structure of deprivation in an increasingly urbanized South Asia, this paper will limits its scope to poverty in urban Pakistan. Urban poverty indicators are typically infl