Transcript Poverty in Pakistan: Vulnerabilities, Social Gaps and Rural Dynamics World Bank, 2002

Poverty in Pakistan:
Vulnerabilities, Social Gaps and
Rural Dynamics
World Bank, 2002
Presentation at Lahore
December 28, 2002
Objectives of the Poverty Assessment
• Look beyond measurement of poverty, to focus on nonincome dimensions of poverty – including qualitative and
institutional aspects - and the rural economy
• Initiate collaboratively an ongoing research program to
inform and elevate dialogue and debate on policies related
to poverty reduction
• Key Elements
– Rationalize poverty trends over the decade of the 1990s, using multiple
rounds of household survey
– Undertake a new survey to explore in-depth issues of poverty, rural and
human development
– Combine quantitative information with insights from qualitative survey
– Focus on the institutional and political economy factors that impede
effective delivery of public services
Broad Messages
• Poverty has stagnated in the nineties (up to 199899), also revealing a high incidence of vulnerability
• Rural poverty is of special concern, having shown
little reduction over the period
• Even during periods of relatively high poverty
reduction, human development has not registered
commensurate progress
• Institutional constraints pose major obstacles to
distribution of benefits of growth across sectors
• Recent reforms present unique and innovative
opportunities to support better distribution of
public benefits
Poverty Trends: the Static Picture
Head Count (% Values)
60.0
50.0
40.0
Urban
Rural
30.0
Overall
20.0
10.0
1998-99
1993-94
1990-91
1987-88
1984-85
0.0
Static measures do not tell the full story; Large movements in
and out of poverty indicate high incidence of vulnerability
Trends in Mean Consumption & Inequality
Inequality (Gini Coefficient) in Per
Equivalent Adult Consumption
650
198788
199091
199394
199899
31.6
30.2
35.3
450
Rural
24.0
26.7
24.6
25.1
350
Overall 27.0
28.7
27.6
29.6
Urban
Rural
Overall
1998-99
31.6
1993-94
Urban
1990-91
550
1987-88
Expenditure in Rs. (1990-91 Prices)
Mean Per Equivalent Adult Consumption (Constant
1990-91 Prices)
Poverty is Multidimensional
• Moreover, other deprivations often adversely
affect the future potential to climb out of poverty
– Vulnerability to shocks: Inadequate access to insurance
opportunities
– Landlessness: Over 50% of the rural population in Pakistan is
landless, over 40% of them are poor
– Lack of education: 42% of the population living in households with
illiterate heads is poor, compared to 2% of those in other households.
– Poor access to health care and basic infrastructure: The poor are
less likely to access health facilities. 24% of the poor rely on unsafe
sources for drinking water, compared to 19% of the non-poor
– Exclusion: Social groupings such as caste, kinship groups and
biradris determine access to services and economic opportunities
Why Social Gap
• Social indicators (with a few exceptions)
have stagnated during the 1990s
• Factors that contribute are:
– Inadequate social spending
– Inefficiency in spending allocated amounts
– Poor quality in delivery of services linked to
incentives
Primary Gross Enrollment Rates (GERs)
in the Nineties
Punjab
Sindh
NWFP
Balochistan
All Four Above
Azad J & K
Northern Areas
FATA
Pakistan -- Urban
Pakistan -- Rural
Pakistan – Male
Pakistan -- Female
Pakistan -- Aggregate
1991
..
..
.
..
..
..
..
..
81
59
78
53
65
1995-96
73
70
66
63
71
..
..
..
88
64
81
60
71
1996-97
73
64
68
58
70
..
..
..
87
63
78
61
70
1998-99
76
56
67
58
69
101
75
39
91
61
78
60
69
Primary GERs (% values)
Primary GERs by Per Capita
Consumption Expenditure
100
80
60
40
20
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Per Capita Exp. Deciles
1991
1998-99
9
10
• Rising rich-poor gap: primary GERs have fallen from 1991 to
1998-99 for the lowest 5 deciles
What Factors Determine School Enrollments?
• Household’s economic status is important
• So is parents’ education: having a mother who has
attended school makes it 23% more likely that a
child will also do so
• Proximity to school is a factor for girls’ schooling
in rural areas
• Proximity to physical school facilities however is
only part of the story: quality matters
Results from the PRHS sample of 206 rural
public schools offering primary education
• Inadequate basic facilities: 1/3 of the schools had an
adequate building; about 50% had access to drinking water,
toilets or furniture; 16% of co-ed schools had a separate toilet
for girls
• Teacher absenteeism: At the time of the visit, no classes
were being held in 34 schools. In the remaining schools, 20%
of teachers were absent
• Low student attendance: At the time of the visit, about
64% and 61% of enrolled boys and girls respectively were
present in the classroom
• Better quality of schools is associated with higher
enrollments in rural communities
Expansion in Private Schooling
Private Shares in Gross Enrollments
By Per Capita Consumption
60
% Values
40
20
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Per Capita Exp.
Deciles
Primary-1991
Primary-1998-99
Secondary-1991
Secondary-1998-99
10
• Recent years have
seen a rapid
expansion in private
schooling
• From 1991 to 98-99,
share of private sector
in primary enrollment
increased from 14%
to 23%, in secondary
schooling from 8 to
17%. The expansion
occurred across all
consumption groups
Are Private Schools Affordable?
Province
Median
Mean
Standard
Deviation
NWFP
1342.85
1688.56
2160.58
914.39
533
PUNJAB
850
1286.94
3331.34
661.13
4,201
SINDH
1297.18
1950.62
3375.17
1175.33
1,290
BALOCHISTAN
1740.98
3390.91
2095.64
2327.21
1200
61
4791.86
4941.39
2940.1
50
NORTHERN AREAS
2688
5543.68
5800.98
2183.76
5
AJK
1541.9
2138.75
3793.97
992.31
110
Inter-quartile
range
ISLAMABAD
Inter-quartile Number of
range
Schools
Number of
Province Code
Median
Mean
Standard
Deviation
NWFP
1200
1367.71
1551.57
649.83
1,165
FATA
1080
1067.63
530
705.99
117
PUNJAB
632.21
762.72
931.16
423.64
3,955
SINDH
1142.97
1014.47
537.8
661.2
84
BALOCHISTAN
1351.36
1308.78
732.26
526.67
34
ISLAMABAD
1489.13
1973.4
2037.78
1065.5
64
NORTHERN AREAS
1560
1295.6
669.91
700
11
AJK
1162.16
1192.34
725.94
463.33
643
Schools
• Private school
fees are fairly
low
– lowest in Punjab
– account for
1.7% (rural) and
2.1% of hh
expenditure in
Punjab
• Distribution
skewed to the
right
Indicators of Quality
Public Private
School
Characteristics
Mean Student-Teacher Ratio
% Schools having Toilet Facility
% Classrooms with Desks in a School
% Classrooms that are Unusable in a School
42.7
48
40
24
24.8
84
80
12
Average years of Teaching Experience
Number of In-Service Trainings in last Three
Years
Highest Grade Completed
Number Of Leave Days In The Last One Year
14.6
.69
6.7
.18
11.76
12.7
12.73
6.0
Head Teacher
Characteristics
• Compare favorably on observable indicators with public
schools
• Preliminary work on testing (ADK 2002) suggests that
learning may be on par with public schools
The Promise of Public/Private Partnership ?
• Private Schooling a fast-growing sector
• Tend to have ‘reasonable’ fees
– better quality inputs
• Better gender balance
– higher ratio of female students in private compared
to public schools (43% vs. 37%)
• IF private schools are desirable, what can be
done to encourage the setting up of such
institutions?
Health Outcomes
• The decade registers improvements in some
indicators of health and fertility
– Infant mortality has fallen
– Immunization coverage has improved
– Knowledge and use of family planning methods
have increased
• Significant challenges remain
– High incidence of nutritional deficiencies among
children
– Access to health care, and maternal care remains
low in rural areas
Nutritional Status of Rural Children
Anthropometry
Figure 3.13: Z-scores vs. age
1
0
Z-scores
• Based on data from
PRHS (2002)
• Declines over time
till 20-24 months
• Subsequent `catchup’ to a small extent
• By the age of 5, a
child has about 60
percent probability
of being stunted,
and 45 percent
probability of being
underweight
-1
-2
-3
-4
0
6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54
age (month)
Height for age
Weight for age
Weight for height
Source:PRHS(2001)
Insights from Analysis of Nutritional
Outcomes
• Nutritional status of children almost
unchanged over last 15 years in sample areas
• Strongly correlated with income and mother’s
education
• Impact of income almost entirely driven by
community level average income
• Indications that quality of community facilities
may explain this phenomenon
Rural Challenges
• Virtually no change in rural poverty or consumption
inequality over the decade of the 1990s (HIES), although
value-added in agriculture grew at average 4.2 percent
What happened to the growth?
The apparent disconnect between agricultural growth and
poverty may have a number of causes:
– Droughts and floods over the decade: suggest year-to year
fluctuation in measured consumption (as in agricultural growth)
– Stagnation in the non-farm sector
– Direct and indirect effects of land and asset inequality on
productivity and poverty: our main focus
Distribution of Land Ownership
Note: Marginal <= 2 acres of land, small >2 and <=5, medium
>5 &<=15, large >15 &<=40 and very large >40 acres
What Factors Limit Productivity in
Agriculture?
• Imperfect or non-existent markets for land and
other assets like tube-wells and tractors
• Inequality in asset ownership, particularly land,
appears to have significant and large
productivity effects
• Inefficiencies in irrigation lead to productivity
losses
– Both canal and tubewell water have strong effects on
crop yields and farm profits; the supply of canal
irrigation is a significant constraint on productivity
Inefficiencies in the Irrigation System
• Irrigation infrastructure is increasingly dilapidated
– Investments in physical infrastructure (rehabilitation of canals,
lining of water channels, land leveling) and maintenance
undertaken only sporadically
• Why? Poor incentives for irrigation departments and
farmers to maintain/improve the system or reduce wastage
• Institutional factors influence access to water
– Payments to irrigation officials for delivery of
sanctioned water supplies are routine and endemic
– Misappropriation of canal water by upstream farmers
is substantial and integrally involves irrigation officials
Policy Imperatives
• The broad thrust of the policy framework in I-PRSP
reinforced
– Increasing and sustaining growth remains critical for poverty
reduction
• Concomitant reforms necessary to maximize the
poverty-reducing potential of growth
– Reduce inequality in asset ownership; Land reform ?
– Improving the coverage and targeting of social protection
schemes to help cope with shocks
– Building institutions for better delivery of services - from human
development to irrigation, infrastructure, credit and insurance
services
– Empowering communities in the design and delivery of services
Rural Poverty: an Urgent Priority
• Land and asset inequality in rural areas has important
productivity consequences—beyond a distributional
concern
• Decreasing poverty and increasing agricultural
productivity are not competing policy objectives
– Land and tenancy (security of tenure) reform
– Innovative use of credit to enable land leasing, and the leasing of
other productive assets
– Restructuring of canal irrigation
– Income diversification through more vibrant non-farm rural
development
Social Protection
• In the long-run, vulnerability will be reduced through
growth and increased opportunities for diversification
• In the absence of credit and insurance markets, public
programs like zakat and Khushal Pakistan can serve as
insurance mechanisms for vulnerable groups
– Appropriate targeting and coverage is key
– Design and targeting will both benefit from regular monitoring
of programs on the ground
• Community-based experiments in credit and insurance
can work where formal mechanisms fail
– Scaling these efforts up will require concomitant reform of
formal institutions
Momentum for Change: Reforming
Institutions
• The ongoing devolution reform provides a natural
starting point
• Devolution may lead to increased participation of
communities in decision-making and greater
accountability of government officials
• Devolution not a panacea by itself
– Continuing role of higher level governments in defining roles and
responsibilities, designing fiscal incentives and promoting equity
– The challenge of capacity-building at the local level
• Re-thinking the role of the government: forging
partnerships with the private sector and community
organizations