Socio-economic conditions in Pakistan

According to World Bank data from World Bank data for Pakistan (accessed 2020-07-04) as well as auxiliary data from the World Bank Pakistan country profile (accessed 2020-07-04), I extracted some figures which give a rough idea of socio-economic conditions in Pakistan. They are listed as follows:

• GDP:

  • Pakistan’s GDP for 2019 was USD 278.222B
  • It peaked in 2018 at USD 314.568B

  

• Population:

  • 216.6M as of 2019
  • 45M as of 1960

  

  • Population growth rate of 2.1 % as of 2018
  • Child mortality rate (for children under 5 years) of 6.9 % as of 2018

• School enrollment (primary school):

  • 94.3 % as of 2018
  • 49.3 % as of 1971

  

  • Primary education completion: 71 % as of 2018
  • Secondary education enrollment: 43 % as of 2018
  • Gender Disparity Index of 1 for primary school and secondary school enrollment combined: This indicates an equal enrollment of boys and girls

• Percentage of people living below the poverty line:

  • As per national records:

    • 24.3 % as of 2015
    • 64.3 % as of 2001
    • There has been consistent annual decrease in this ratio over the years

  

  • When adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (2011) - I didn’t quite understand the 2011 bit there:

    • 3.9 % as of 2018
    • 8.3 % in 2010
    • 28.6 % in 2000
    • 58.9 % in 1990

• Life expectancy:

  • 67.1 years as of 2018
  • 45.3 years as of 1960
  • Consistent increase over the years

  

• Gross National Income (GNI) per capita:

  • USD 1530 as of 2019
  • Peaked at USD 1590 in 2018
  • USD 90 in 1960
  • More or less consistent increase over the years

  

  • USD 5110 when adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity as of 2018
• Military spending is 4 % of GDP as of 2018
• 72.6 % of the population have access to a cell phone and a subscription as of 2018

• 15.5 % of the population uses the internet as of 2018

  • An internet user is one who has accessed internet in any form in the last 3 months

For more information on the digital landscape in Pakistan, checkout the post on Digital landscape in Pakistan

Thoughts

It seems that Pakistan is doing somewhat better than I thought. Some issues of concern that I see are:

• Low secondary education enrollment rate

  • This needs to be drastically improved

  • Possible reasons could be:

    • Families don’t want their children to study

    • Children want to or are forced to earn an income instead of studying:

      • Due to familial financial constraints
      • Due to a lack of interest in education
      • Prioritization of short-term gain over long-term

• High child mortality rate

  • Lack of access to medical facilities in remote areas
• National estimates of poverty are quite high at around a quarter of the population
• Cell phone usage is quite high and a large segment of the population can be served through that
• Internet usage is quite low and needs to expand quite drastically so that more people can have access to knoweldge, information, and digital services