Papers by Ghulam Muhammad Arif
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Mar 31, 2015
Business & Economic Review, 2018
This article adds to the existing literature by analyzing static and dynamic welfare impacts of f... more This article adds to the existing literature by analyzing static and dynamic welfare impacts of food price changes for rural households in Pakistan. All three waves of Pakistan Rural Household Survey (2001, 2004, and 2010) were used. Lagrange Multiplier and a test of the coefficients of squared expenditure term (Likelihood Ratio test) were used to determine whether QUAIDS is an appropriate model or not. Nonlinear Seemingly Unrelated Regression (NLSUR) was used to estimate demand functions for eight food groups (Cereals, milk, and milk products, vegetables, cooking oil, pulses and other food). Results indicate inelastic expenditure elasticity of cereals in the pooled sample. Own price elasticities for all food groups, except other food, are smaller than zero during the entire sampled period (2001, 2004, 2010), and cereals are complimentary with meat and pulses, as suggested by cross price elasticities (uncompensated). Furthermore, results reveal that rural households needed a 28 percent increase in food expenditure and 26 percent increase in total expenditure to return to the previous level of welfare (year-2001).
The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment, 2019
Poverty has increased during the 90s overall as well as in rural and urban areas, after experienc... more Poverty has increased during the 90s overall as well as in rural and urban areas, after experiencing downward trends during the 80s. Besides, the gap between rural and urban poverty has also widened. The recent estimates show that more than one-third of our population lives in extreme poverty, and around 70% of these unfortunate people reside in rural areas. The results based on agro-ecological divisions of the country indicate that poverty is lowest in the barani areas of the Punjab because of better opportunities in terms of employment in other sectors, particularly, the services sector as well as overseas migration. The highest is observed in Balochistan may be due to nonavailability of irrigation water and low rainfall making dwellers more vulnerable to droughts seriously affecting the crops and the livestock which are the main sources of their livelihood. Poverty is widely spread in irrigated areas of the country particularly in Southern Punjab and Sindh where feudal system sti...
Reviews the agrarian structure and tenancy arrangements in two provinces of Pakistan, examines ch... more Reviews the agrarian structure and tenancy arrangements in two provinces of Pakistan, examines characteristics of the rural labour force and agricultural labour systems and investigates evidence of bonded labour. Puts forward suggestions for future research.
The Pakistan Development Review
The present study used the 1995-96 Pakistan Integrated Household Survey data to determine the soc... more The present study used the 1995-96 Pakistan Integrated Household Survey data to determine the socio-economic, demographic, and environmental covariates of both prevalence and duration of diarrhoea among children under five in Pakistan. Seven logit models were estimated to determine factors influencing the probability of occurrence of diarrhoea. Seven Proportional Hazards Models were used to examine factors determining the duration of diarrhoea. Results revealed that around 20 percent of children under five suffered from diarrhoea in the 30 days prior to the survey. Child’s age was negatively associated with diarrhoea morbidity. Children who had measles immunisation were less likely than children without this immunisation to have diarrhoea. The study also revealed that in controlling the occurrence of diarrhoea among children, sanitation facilities seemed to be more important than the supply of drinking-water. With respect to the duration of diarrhoea, the hazard models showed that y...
The Pakistan Development Review
Since the mid-1980s Pakistan has faced return flows of its workers from the Middle East on a larg... more Since the mid-1980s Pakistan has faced return flows of its workers from the Middle East on a large scale. The re-employment experience of returning workers has usually been examined by focusing on the unemployment rate. This paper concentrates on ‘duration of unemployment’ and examines the influences of socio-demographic characteristics of returnees and their households on the transition from being ‘not employed’ to being employed by estimating the proportional hazards model. The 1986 ILO survey of return migrant households is the data source used in this study. The majority of returnees who were ‘not employed’ (unemployed and inactive) had been without a job for more than one year. Nearly one-quarter of them had not been working for more than two years. The analysis shows that variables indicating the human capital of return migrants, such as age, education, occupation and work experience, appear to have greater influence on their re-employment probabilities than variables related ...
The Pakistan Development Review
The quantification of landlessness is a formidable task. Conceptual ambiguities involved in the c... more The quantification of landlessness is a formidable task. Conceptual ambiguities involved in the classification of landlessness and data limitations compound the difficulties in the estimation. Landlessness, which is an elusive concept, tends to acquire interpretations which vary with the objectives, context and estimation procedures adopted in different research endeavours. The denotation and connotation of the concept of landlessness, the population of interest (or at risk) and the objectives of measurement therefore need to be spell out very clearly for a meaningful and policy-relevant exercise. Identification of the state of landlessness using the criterion of ownership and access to land, has often been made. While the 'ownership' may be clear in certain contexts, that of 'access' needs further explanations in terms of the nature, extent and type of access. A related question, is the demarcation of the population or its subset whose landlessness is to be estimate...
The Pakistan Development Review
The role of economic factors, particularly income and consumption, in the wellbeing of a populati... more The role of economic factors, particularly income and consumption, in the wellbeing of a population is well documented. The well-being, however, does not depend solely on these factors, social indicators such as life expectancy, health, education and nutrition serve an important complementary function [Linnemayr, et al. (2008)]. The most significant social problems in many developing countries including Pakistan are widespread child malnutrition, high infant mortality and low literacy. Child malnutrition is considered as the key risk factor for illness and death, contributing to more than half the deaths of children globally [Cheah, et al. (2010)]. It also affects the child morbidity rate and poses threat to their physical and mental development, which results in lower level of educational attainment [Chirwa and Ngalawa (2008)]. The recent literature therefore considers the nutrition status as an important dimension of individual wellbeing [Babatunde, Olagunju, and Fakayode (2011)].
The Pakistan Development Review
The present study measures time poverty and its incidence across gender, occupational groups, ind... more The present study measures time poverty and its incidence across gender, occupational groups, industries, regions, and income levels using Time Use Survey (TUS) 2007, the first nationwide time use survey for Pakistan. In the entire TUS sample, the incidence of time poverty is 14 percent. Women are found to be more time poor than men whether employed or not. This is because of certain women-specific activities that they have to perform irrespective of their employment status. Working women are far more time poor than those not working.. Women accepting a job have to make a major trade-off between time poverty and monetary poverty. People working in professions and industries that generally require extended work hours and offer low wage rates are more time poor. This entails a situation of double jeopardy for workers who tend to be money and time poor at the same time. The close association of time poverty with low income found in this study corroborates this conclusion. Government ca...
The Pakistan Development Review
This paper analyses the incidence of chronic and transitory poverty in Pakistan in both urban and... more This paper analyses the incidence of chronic and transitory poverty in Pakistan in both urban and rural settings. The findings are that rural poverty is severer and also chronic as compared to transitory poverty in urban centres. The main factor behind this phenomenon is the homogeneity of the rural set-up which affects the employment and wage levels adversely. On the other hand, in the urban areas, heterogeneous population with diverse occupations provides better employment and wage opportunities. Furthermore, illiteracy, landlessness, lack of ownership of dwellings, and dependency on sharecropping are the main factors accentuating rural poverty. The paper also analyses the zakat element of the safety net strategy. Contrary to the prevailing perception that zakat does not reach the actually poor, it turns out that in fact zakat has become an “identification mark” for the chronic poor. The findings of this paper have significant implications for the poverty reduction strategy of the...
THE LAHORE JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
The main focus of this study is Rural Punjab and it contributes to regional poverty research in t... more The main focus of this study is Rural Punjab and it contributes to regional poverty research in two ways; first, using a more recent household survey data, carried out in August 2007 by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), it provides fresh poverty estimates for the rural areas of the Punjab. Second, the poverty differential across the agroclimatic zones of Punjab have been explained by urbanization, overseas migration and the labor market structure operating in these zones. This study shows four major factors that explain inequalities in poverty levels. First, the rural areas of two zones, barani and rice/wheat, are well integrated with urban settings. This integration has allowed their rural populations to work in the industrial sector of Central Punjab and the services sector in North Punjab primarily Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Second, the belt from Lahore to Attock in the Punjab has benefited the most from overseas migration. The flow of remittances has helped ...
The Pakistan Development Review
There is convincing evidence that Pakistan has entered the demographic bonus phase; child depende... more There is convincing evidence that Pakistan has entered the demographic bonus phase; child dependency is declining and youth share in the total population is rising. This paper has examined youth employment in the context of demographic transition evidenced since the early 1990s. Changes in the level of educational attainment have also been analysed. The study has used the data from Pakistan Demographic Surveys and Labour Force Surveys carried out between 1990 and 2005. Findings of the study show that the benefits of demographic transition in terms of rising share of youth in the total population has partially been translated through development of their human capital and productive absorption in the local labour market. While the pace of human capital formation seems to be satisfactory in urban Pakistan, it is dismal in rural areas, particularly for females. High levels of both female inactivity across the education categories and unemployment for males as well as females urge a str...
The Pakistan Development Review
There is sample evidence that poverty which declined rapidly in Pakistan in the 1970s and 1980s h... more There is sample evidence that poverty which declined rapidly in Pakistan in the 1970s and 1980s has increased in the 1990s.1 This rise in poverty is likely to have adversely affected the ability of poor households to enrol their young children in schools. The cost of schooling even when it is free is usually the most pressing obstacles for poor people to send their children in school. Similarly, health correlates strongly with poverty. This does not mean that poverty is itself a direct cause of diseases, but it lies behind other causes of disease such as in-sanitary living conditions, lack of adequate nutrition, poor access to safe drinking water, and sanitation and bad working conditions [World Bank (1993)]. Because of these factors, the poor are more affected by communicable diseases than are the rich. They have also less access to modern health facilities. This paper examines recent trends in poverty and their impact on primary school enrolment, health status and housing conditio...
The Pakistan Development Review
The share of private and NGO schools in primary education has substantially increased over time, ... more The share of private and NGO schools in primary education has substantially increased over time, though the public sector is still a major player in this area. The present study analyses the factors determining the quality of education offered by the three types of schools and draws policy recommendations for improving primary education in Pakistan. The study compares learning achievement of Class 4 students enrolled in 50 public, private, and NGO schools located across six districts of Pakistan and in Azad Kashmir in terms of their scores in Mathematics, Urdu, and General Knowledge tests. The analysis shows that, practically, there is no gap between public and NGO schools in terms of the test scores of their students. However, a significant test score gap was found between the students enrolled in public and private schools. This gap was largely explained by family background and school-related variables, including teachers’ qualification and student/teacher ratio. However, the per...
The Pakistan Development Review
The bulk of research on labour market conditions in Pakistan has concentrated on the economic act... more The bulk of research on labour market conditions in Pakistan has concentrated on the economic activity rate, the number of employed persons, or the unemployment rate at a particular point in time. These stock measures of labour market situation are useful from a policy viewpoint as they give a broad indication of the dimension of the problem. For example, the recent labour force surveys show an increase in the level of open unemployment from 5.9 percent in 1997-98 to 7.8 percent in 1999-2000 [Pakistan (2001)]. There is also an emerging consensus that during the 1990s poverty has increased at the national as well as for rural and urban areas of the country [Qureshi and Arif (2001)]. Labour market is considered as the main route for establishing the link between macro policies, the resulting GDP growth and poverty alleviation [Rahman (2002)]. Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (IPRSP) and other development plans have suggested various targets of employment creation for poverty r...
The Pakistan Development Review
Poverty analysis in developing countries including Pakistan has in general focused on poverty tre... more Poverty analysis in developing countries including Pakistan has in general focused on poverty trends based on cross-sectional datasets, with very little attention being paid to dynamics—of transitory or chronic poverty. Transitory poor are those who move out or fall into poverty between two or more points of time whereas the chronic poor remain in the poverty trap for a significant period of their lives. The static measures of households’ standard of living do not necessarily provide a good insight into their likely stability over time. For instance, a high mobility into or out of poverty may suggest that a higher proportion of a population experiences poverty over time than what the cross-sectional data might show. 1 It also implies that a much smaller proportion of the population experiences chronic poverty contrary to the results of cross-sectional datasets in a particular year [Hossain and Bayes (2010)]. Thus, the analysis of poverty dynamics is important to uncover the true nat...
The Pakistan Development Review
Primary education is at the base of the pyramid of education, and is regarded as a fundamental hu... more Primary education is at the base of the pyramid of education, and is regarded as a fundamental human right today. In addition, it has several tangible social and economic effects. As an essential component of human capital, primary education plays an important role in the economic growth and development of a country.1 Its impact on several other socioeconomic variables has also been documented in the literature. To quote a few examples, Butt (1984) has found that five or more years of a farmer’s education lead to increased farm productivity, reduced use of farm labour, and increased use of yield augmenting inputs. Azhar (1988) also reports a significant relationship between the number of years of schooling and increase in farm output due to increased technical efficiency. Studies of the rates of returns to education attribute a positive value to the rate of returns to primary education.2 This means that by acquiring primary education one can increase one’s earnings.
The Pakistan Development Review
The current level of urbanisation in Pakistan, approximately 33 percent in 1998, is not high by g... more The current level of urbanisation in Pakistan, approximately 33 percent in 1998, is not high by global standards.1 But it is commonly linked with unemployment, underemployment, shortage of housing, transport and other infrastructure like water supply and sewerage. Compared to other areas of population dynamics, such as fertility and mortality, studies in the field of urbanisation and internal migration in Pakistan are rather limited. During the last three decades hardly half a dozen studies could be added in the field of urbanisation. These studies are primarily based on data generated by the different censuses.2 After the 1979 Population Labour Force and Migration (PLM) Survey, no nationally representative survey addressing the issue of urbanisation and internal migration could be carried out. Even regional studies could not be conducted during the last two decades.
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Papers by Ghulam Muhammad Arif