How should we think about Pakistan’s middle class?

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By Shehryar Nabi

Pakistan’s expanding, largely urban middle class shows a country far different from its traditional poles of poor and elite.

How should we understand Pakistan’s middle class – a phenomenon inseparable from its economic and political future?

On October 31st, the Lahore-based Consortium for Development Policy Research co-organized an event with the Urban Institute in Washington D.C. to assess this question. The event featured a panel of researchers studying middle class trends both globally and in Pakistan.

Here are key takeaways from the conversation:

We know the middle class is growing, but it remains ill-defined

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the middle class in Pakistan. Go to any major city, and you will see consumerist lifestyles that, as described by World Bank Economist Ghazala Mansuri at the event, are free from the depravations of poverty but still depend on public services that the rich opt-out of.

But how big is the middle class in numbers?

There are two government sources used to size up Pakistan’s middle class: National income accounts and household consumption surveys. Combining these measures, and using the global middle class definition of $11 to $110 in daily income[1], Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Homi Kharas found that about 50 million Pakistanis are middle class, comprising 27 percent of the population. By 2030, that number is forecast to reach 160 million people, 66 percent of its population. That would make it the 13th largest middle class in the world.[2]

Mansuri commented that economic definitions of the middle class can vary wildly, making these figures imprecise. But existing measures at least confirm that Pakistan’s transition to a middle class society is in full swing.

How the middle class changes society

The rise of Pakistan’s middle class has broad implications for society, detailed at the event by Homi Kharas.

Firstly, the rise of the middle class has a varied effect on climate change. On the one hand, a growing middle class exacerbates climate change by increasing overall consumption, and thus carbon emissions. On the other hand, the middle class tends to be educated and live in smaller households, both of which are associated with lower carbon footprints.

The middle class also has an important effect on population growth. Pakistan’s fertility rate has been declining since the 1980s, and a growing middle class is likely to slow down population growth even more. If this is indeed the case, then the projection of the middle class described above would be too high because it does not account for a lower fertility rate.

Demand for education, the surest pathway for moving up the socioeconomic ladder, is driven up by the middle class.

Will the middle class strengthen democratic institutions? Kharas remarked that global experience suggests that rising prosperity and authoritarian government are by no means mutually exclusive. Nor are existing democratic institutions necessarily safeguarded by the middle class.

Kharas observed that because the middle class tends to demand public services, political tensions can stem from service delivery failures that spark distrust in the government. The evidence on this is in Pakistan mixed. A recent survey in Lahore shows that public service delivery is high on the minds of voters. Yet despite public service delivery failures – which Ghazala Mansuri pointed out have remained especially dire in Karachi despite a growing middle class – the expected political reaction has not been pronounced. This suggests that the middle class is not mobilized to demand accountability for service delivery through the political system.

The rise of the middle class does not guarantee gender equality

There are intuitive reasons why a rising middle class anticipates better outcomes for women. Middle class incomes may be driven by women earners in the family, increasing demand for their education, and in effect empowering them to make choices beyond the constraints of patriarchal norms.

But the evidence from Pakistan shows the path to empowerment is not so straightforward.

Drawing on data from 2005 to 2015, Urban Institute Research Associate Reehana Raza first pointed to trends that suggest a positive impact of middle class growth on women’s empowerment. In urban areas, which are strongly associated with the middle class, women’s enrollment in secondary education increased by 10 percent. Women’s enrollment in tertiary education grew from 200,000 to 600,000. Raza also found that income returns for each additional year of schooling are higher for women than for men.

However, this isn’t translating into substantial gains in employment. Although women’s employment is on an upward trend, only 25 percent participate in the labor market. Just 20 percent of women with a bachelor’s degree enter the labor market. Women who seek employment tend to do so after receiving at least ten years of schooling, whereas men can find work at any level of education. Raza concluded that while high income returns demonstrate an opportunity for women to benefit from education, it isn’t being reflected in Pakistan’s workforce.

Does the middle class increase women’s political representation? According to ongoing research in Lahore led by Ali Cheema, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, the gender gap between men and women’s votes remains high in urban areas where the middle class has grown. Ali Cheema discussed what his research shows about the gender gap at the event.

One theory is that patriarchal norms at the household deny women their right to vote, or their votes are decided for them. But Cheema’s team found a different story. Women are in fact not prohibited from voting, and voting decisions are largely their own. They also found that divergences in women and men’s votes can have important consequences for electoral outcomes.

A different explanation offered by Cheema is the persistence of patriarchal norms at the party level. Cheema’s team found that party organizers and the movements they build are overwhelmingly male. This suggests they are unengaged with potential women voters.

Surveys conducted earlier this year by Cheema’s team show that women feel invisible to political parties, leaving them unenthusiastic about elections. Women are 21 percent more likely than their male counterparts to strongly agree that political parties are only interested in men’s votes.

Cheema argued that to reduce the gender gap in voter turnout, there needs to be a greater focus on the exclusionary tendencies of existing political structures even where the middle class is growing.

What we need to sustain middle class growth

Pakistan’s middle class surge is not inevitable if economic, social, and political structures remain as they are. At the event, ways to ensure the middle class’s continued expansion were floated with the audience for discussion.

Homi Kharas argued that the future of middle class jobs will not be in the manufacturing sector, the conventional pathway from lower to middle-income country status. Rather it will be in services – education, health, banking, telecommunications, etc. Kharas highlighted that the dynamism of the services sector creates wide opportunities in the job market. However, services will have to be tradable to drive middle class growth. Right now, however, Pakistan does not have internationally competitive services other than migrant labor.

A neglected avenue of middle class growth, Ghazala Mansuri argued, is agriculture. Mansuri stressed that the largely urban phenomenon of the middle class should not lead to the neglect of rural areas, which currently suffer from low productivity and poor service delivery.

The final, but highly important priority emphasized by Kharas is increasing women’s employment. Pakistan’s middle class is exceptional in how few women enter the labor market. For other middle-income countries, like China and Malaysia, incorporating women into the workforce was pivotal for overcoming widespread poverty and raising living standards. Unless social and structural barriers that prevent women’s labor force participation are removed, sustaining Pakistan’s middle class will be a challenge.

Shehryar Nabi is a communications associate at the Consortium for Development Policy Research.

[1] However, middle class trends have been observed among Pakistanis earning $5 to $10 per day.

[2] Kharas added a big caveat to his methodology. If you judged Pakistan’s by its national income accounts, it would be slightly richer than Bangladesh. But if you just looked at household consumption surveys, which do not account for 60 percent of national income, Pakistan would be poorer than Kenya or Cameroon. Household surveys fall short because questionnaires miss several modes of consumption, omit the informal sector, and are often unanswered by the top 10 percent.  

Pakistan’s missing women

pakistani-womenBy Hina Shaikh

The headline of Pakistan’s 2017 population census is that population growth has happened at a much faster rate than expected. But another big takeaway is the problem of Pakistan’s “missing women”. According to the census, there are five million more men than women in Pakistan. Men are 51 percent of the population while women are 49 percent. The sex ratio – 105 men for every 100 women – has not adjusted to the demographic norm: a higher ratio of women compared to men in the entire population largely due to women’s longer life expectancy.

To bring attention to the fairly simple but powerful statistical phenomenon of “missing women”, the Nobel prize-winning welfare economist Amartya Sen, used the sex ratio to calculate the number of missing women in Asian and North Africa. His analysis revealed that the proportion of women was lower than what one would expect if the birth and death rates of females were the same as that of men.

Pakistan’s census findings need to be better understood to enable adequate policy responses to the “missing women” problem. The inverse sex ratio is both endemic and cyclical, mostly perpetuated by patriarchal mindsets manifesting in widespread gender-based inequalities and violence. Clearly these issues remain insufficiently addressed by current policies, programs, and legislation.

A closer look at Pakistan and sex ratios

Looking at overall population, all six censuses conducted in Pakistan since 1951 indicate that men have consistently outnumbered women. The most recent results confirm a sex ratio of 105 even as female life expectancy at birth stands at 67, compared to 65 for men.

While an improvement from the figure reported in the 1998 census (108), the world’s average sex ratio is much lower (101). The current sex ratio is also much higher than those of many middle and lower-income regions such as South Asia (103) and Sub-Saharan Africa (99.8). Only two other countries in the world have inverse sex ratios: India and China.

Among the provinces, the highest sex ratio is in Balochistan (110) and the Islamabad Capital Territory (111). Punjab (103) witnesses the largest improvement in this regard. Some of the reasons cited for the gender imbalance include a lack of transparency in more socially conservative areas such as Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and Balochistan, where data on female members of households is not openly shared. This means that many women may have been uncounted.

What explains the gap?

Apparently, no female enumerators were hired even in the most conservative regions where the census was conducted. This must have not only affected estimates of the sex ratio, but also violated the instructions of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), which stipulate that women would be appointed as enumerators and supervisors for the census.

Social scientists are also beginning to detect a trend of sex-selective practices at birth in Pakistan. This is not to say that the practice of sex selection is widespread, although female infanticide, despite having declined in recent years, remains common. A deep-rooted preference for sons over daughters is pervasive in Pakistan, as is in India (though not with the same intensity).

Maternal mortality drives up women’s death rates. According to the United Nations Population Fund, for every 100,000 women 178 die from complications with childbirth in Pakistan because of poor access to health facilities.

The gender imbalance also remains higher in cities than in rural areas. A higher urban sex ratio shows an intense migration of men to cities in search of employment. Because their families are left behind in rural villages, men also make up a disproportionately large share of the urban census count.

The link between poverty and female-to-male ratio appears weak as many of the poorest regions of the world have a sex ratio that favors women. This is substantiated by the fact that improvements in sex ratio pale in comparison to the 5-fold increase in Pakistan’s GDP since the 1998 census.

Finding the “missing” women

Female labor force participation has a strong positive effect on sex ratios as women are considered to have more economic value once employed, giving parents less reason to prefer sons to daughters. Bangladesh has improved women’s stature simply by encouraging more women to be economically active, which has pushed women’s desire for education. Currently, female participation in Bangladesh stands at 43.1 compared to 22 percent for Pakistan.

Lowering fertility rates by means such as improving access to contraceptives will not only check population growth but also encourage women to become economically active and enroll in schools. Several studies document this link.[1] High fertility rates and larger household sizes also place more burden on women to do unpaid family work, and leaves less time for them to go to school or a workplace.

Many interventions targeting girls’ education remain essential for their economic and wider empowerment. Investment in girls’ education is perceived to have lower returns than boys’ education despite empirical evidence showing the opposite. Provincial governments have launched conditional cash transfer and stipend schemes across different levels of schooling to encourage female enrollment.

Recently, Pakistan passed several important pieces of legislation to improve women’s equality, including anti-sexual harassment (the first country in South Asia to pass such legislation in 2010) and domestic violence laws. In fact, it is one of the few developing countries that has legislation addressing sexual harassment in employment, education, as well as in public places.

However, while legislation is a necessary first step, Achieving a sex ratio in line with demographic norms will require an undoing of patriarchal structures that discriminate against women. Pakistan ranks 143 out of 144 on the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Gender Gap Index. According to the first international experts’ poll on how cities with over 10 million people fare on offering women safety (from sexual violence, harmful cultural practices, and unequal access to healthcare, finance, and education), Karachi fares the second worst. Violence against women and girls remains frequent. In 2016, hundreds were killed in the name of honor according to the Pakistan Human Rights Commission. A change in social attitudes that perpetuate patriarchal mind-sets and behavior is imperative.

Hina Shaikh is a Pakistan country economist at the International Growth Centre.

[1] https://www.cluteinstitute.com/ojs/index.php/JABR/article/download/1336/1319/, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12287033, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.698.4486&rep=rep1&type=pdf, http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1156.pdf


How understanding women’s saving needs can improve micro-lending

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By Rachel Cassidy, Fatima Habib, Shehryar Nabi, and Simon Quinn

There is growing evidence that increasing women’s income not only empowers them as individuals, but also improves the welfare of their families. This is because women tend to spend more than men on education and the physical well-being of children. Investments in children have important implications for social development outcomes such as stunting and education, both of which Pakistan performs poorly on compared to other countries in the region.

Many development interventions are hence increasingly focused on improving women’s access to finance. Pakistani organizations such as Kashf Foundation and the National Rural Support Program have given microloans to women for expanding their businesses and providing education and nutrition to their children.

Key to designing effective micro-lending schemes is understanding how women save money. Studies suggest that both men and women are tempted to spend money instantly even if they desire to save for the future. This is also known as having a “present-bias” or “self-control” problem. If present-biased business owners direct more money to consumption rather than saving and investment, they do not accumulate the capital necessary for their businesses to flourish.

“Commitment savings” products attempt to solve this problem by committing users to saving small amounts of money overtime to build long-term capital. Such products can be implemented in different ways. For example, regular deposits can be made into a savings account, or money can be withdrawn from the account only after a specified date. Uptake of commitment savings products has been high among women. However, research shows the impact of commitment savings is mixed: Some recipients experience large benefits, but usage and re-adoption rates are low, and some recipients even lose money.

Why would commitment savings – a product now popular with banks and NGOs – be inappropriate for some individuals? A study supported by the International Growth Centre (IGC) suggests that the “self-control” problem commitment savings products try to correct for may have been overstated among low-income women.

Researchers (Rachel Cassidy and Simon Quinn) tested this idea by interviewing 530 female microfinance borrowers in Punjab’s Sargodha district twice, with each interview spaced two weeks apart. The women were asked to indicate their demand for commitment savings products, report how much income they expected to earn and how much they actually earned, and perform activities designed to measure self-control. A participation fee was paid randomly to see how an influx of cash affected women’s savings overtime and performance on self-control tests. Half of the women were also interviewed before the wheat harvest, and the other half after the harvest, to understand how women’s responses were affected by the profits made during the harvest.

If self-control problems were a major factor in driving low savings, it was expected that women would show evidence of these problems whether or not they received a payment, and whether they were interviewed before or after the harvest. But the researchers found the opposite was true. Women appeared to have fewer problems with self-control if they were paid at the first interview, or interviewed after the harvest. This suggests that what might look like self-control problems may actually be women’s rational responses to changes in their cash flow over time.

Self-control also had no correlation with women’s demand for commitment savings products. However, demand was much higher after the wheat harvest, indicating that greater financial security may increase uptake of commitment savings. Women also preferred plans with fixed start and end dates over choosing their own timeline. Again, this suggests that women’s saving choices may be more rational than previously thought: When there is less money available, they prefer to keep it to themselves rather than risk committing scarce funds to a savings plan.

The study has important implications for how microfinance can be harnessed to improve social outcomes.

First, it would be unwise to design commitment savings products purely around self-control. Other strategies such as reminders to save and dealing with external constraints – such as spouses or relatives demanding money meant for saving – should be explored further.

Second, varying preferences for how commitment savings products are structured highlights the importance of making them flexible to women’s needs. Time matters a great deal here, as the study shows preferences are sensitive to seasonal changes.

Finally, it would be fruitful to examine other potential drivers of savings problems, particularly for women. More experimentation with different types of savings products is also needed, for example harnessing new technologies to give women greater control over their resources and providing more opportunities to save even for saving products in which money is easily accessible. This increased autonomy may enable female business owners to better allocate their savings towards their businesses as well as their children’s health and education.

Rachel Cassidy is a PhD candidate in Economics at Oxford University.

Fatima Habib is a research associate at the Consortium for Development Policy Research

Shehryar Nabi is a communications associate at the Consortium for Development Policy Research.

Simon Quinn is an associate professor of Economics at Oxford University.

How well represented are women in Pakistan’s rural volunteer organizations?

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By Hamna Ahmed, Asha Gul, Saheem Khizar, Simon Quinn, and Kate Vyborny

Since the 1980s, Pakistan has followed a unique model of social mobilization that has contributed greatly towards rural development and poverty alleviation. This model of social mobilization and community participation involves setting up local community organizations at the neighborhood, village and union council (UC) levels. These organizations comprise local volunteer citizens and are run like small firms with elected management bodies. Rather than address a single issue, they strive for overall community development and undertake activities in several sectors including health, education, microcredit, agriculture, infrastructure, disaster management, and conflict resolution.

The Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) is the apex institution managing this social mobilization process with support from local partner organizations (POs). A joint research team from the Lahore School of Economics, Oxford University, and Duke University is collaborating with PPAF to study these volunteer organizations and how they can be supported to better represent their communities and improve their activities. In the fall of 2014, the team conducted a baseline survey of 850 volunteer organizations formed at the UC level. These organizations are referred to as Local Support Organizations (LSOs) or Third Tier Organizations (TTOs). The survey gathered data through meetings with each organization’s executive body (EB) on  their governance, activities, future plans and characteristics of the EB members.

Data on village characteristics and organization activity for every village  were also collected from one local contact in every UC. In a randomly-selected subset of 150 UCs, a representative sample of households was interviewed to gather data on perceptions about these volunteer organizations and household-level assistance received from them. Based on this data, we found that women both benefit from and are actively involved in the governance and decision-making process of these organizations.

The main findings are as follows:

Women’s representation varies greatly. About 25 percent of the volunteer organizations have all-female EBs, while just under 20 percent of these organizations have all male EBs, with the rest having mixed-gender EBs. Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir have mixed-gender organizations with a significant women’s representation. Almost 90 percent have at least one woman on the EB, while half have at least 25 percent female EB representation (Figure 1). Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan – traditionally socially conservative provinces –have much less women’s representation, with more than 40 percent of organizations with no women on the EB. In Punjab and Sindh there are many volunteer organizations with only women on the EB, in part reflecting deliberate efforts by PPAF and POs in these provinces to organize women’s-only volunteer organizations in recent years.

Figure 1

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Women are less active than men in governance. Women are less likely to attend EB meetings and speak less frequently when they do attend. In mixed-gender organizations, women are less represented in office than men, especially in leadership roles. At the lower management level (i.e. the general body), attendance is equally high for men and women. This likely reflects the lower commitment level required for participation in general body meetings, which occur much less frequently.

Women are more active in organizations where they form the majority. In organizations where women form the majority, the female EB members are much more likely to attend, and more likely to speak. More women in majority-female mixed volunteer organizations hold office. The greater participation of women in environments where they are more concentrated may simply reflect local culture: women in more progressive UCs are more likely to join the volunteer organization, and are also more vocal. It might also be the case that women EB members feel more confident expressing themselves and contesting office when there are more women in the group.

Women EB members come from similar or poorer households than their male counterparts. It is thought that for a woman to be represented, she must have some compensating advantage. This suggests women in volunteer organizations are mostly from wealthier households. But we do not find evidence for this. Women EB members are just as likely to live in mud-brick houses as male EB members, and in fact are more likely in Sindh and Balochistan.

Organizations with more women are less well known in the community. Based on the evidence from the household survey conducted in the UCs, organizations with the most women tend to be least well known in their communities – even among female respondents. This surprising finding might suggest that even women in leadership roles in rural Pakistan are less able than men to effectively promote their organizations’ work publicly.

Practical constraints limit regular participation, especially for women. Significant numbers of both men and women EB members report difficulty attending due to work and transport issues, but more women report difficulties overall. Transport issues are the leading cause of difficulty for women, and are reported much more frequently than domestic responsibilities or issues with obtaining permission for leaving the village (Figure 2).

Figure 2

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Local volunteer organizations tend to be more inclusive of women (and girls) as beneficiaries than in their governance. For almost 90 percent of volunteer organizations, women comprise at least 25 percent of their direct beneficiaries. Around 45 percent have a majority of women as their beneficiaries (Figure 3). The regional patterns of beneficiaries match gender representation in governance: the activities of organizations based in KP and Balochistan tend to directly benefit men more, while activities in Punjab and Sindh are more directed towards women (Figure 4). Microcredit and livelihoods programs are most heavily targeted at women, which in part is because of rules imposed by PPAF itself. Agriculture, dispute resolution and sporting/cultural activities more often target men.

Figure 3

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Figure 4

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Local volunteer organizations with more women in governance do more work targeted at women. Local volunteer organizations with more women on their EBs have more women as direct beneficiaries (Figure 5). Part of this occurs through project choice. EBs with more women’s involvement are also more active in health, education, microcredit, livelihoods, and human and legal rights. Those with only men’s involvement are more involved in infrastructure, sporting, cultural, and entertainment activities.

Figure 5

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Figure 6

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These findings provide a useful, detailed snapshot of the level of women’s inclusion in volunteer community organizations formed at the UC level across the country. However, these findings do not imply causal relationships that are important for policy making. For example, we know that organizations with more women on the EB serve more women beneficiaries, but we do not know whether encouraging EBs to include more women would necessarily increase the number of women beneficiaries.

An ongoing research project will help address these and other questions useful for engaging PPAF with TTOs. Through a randomized control trial, organizations in treatment groups are asked to submit regular reports on either active participation of women in EBs and general bodies, or on the women beneficiaries of their activities. Some volunteer organizations will be offered the opportunity to be publicly recognized if they improve the most in terms of women’s inclusion and other performance measures. The findings from this research will hopefully help guide PPAF practices in the future, build on the existing foundation of TTO organization and achievements, and better serve some of the poorest communities in Pakistan.

Hamna Ahmed is a a faculty member at the Lahore School of Economics and PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Kent

Asha Gul is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of New South Wales.

Saheem Khizar is a field experiment coordinator at the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund.

Simon Quinn is an associate professor of Economics at Oxford University.

Kate Vyobrny is a post-doctoral fellow at Duke University. 

Women’s empowerment drives development

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Image: Flickr user ILO in Asia and the Pacific, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Lauren Woodbury

A growing body of evidence from around the world makes clear that progress towards gender parity contributes to overall economic growth. Therefore, policies designed to empower women are not merely a moral or social imperative, but are also worthwhile because they bring broader economic benefits. Women’s empowerment includes not only their participation in the labor force, but also women’s agency to “formulate strategic choices and to control resources and decisions that affect important life outcomes.”[1]

Globally, reducing the gender gap stimulates economic growth

The strong positive correlation between greater gender equality (especially in education and labor participation) and economic development holds across countries and time.[2] For instance, studies indicate that a reduction of the gap between males and females has been an important driver of European economic growth in the last decade, while greater female participation in the US labor force accounts for a quarter of its current GDP. From 1970 to 1990, Asian-Pacific economies grew by 1.96 percent for every 1 percent increase in women’s participation in non-agricultural employment. Women’s economic participation may have contributed 35 to 40 percent of the annual economic growth of newly industrialized countries over the last three decades.[3] Similarly, estimates show that economic output could increase by as much as 25 percent in developing countries if barriers against women working in major sectors are eliminated. Figure 1 below demonstrates the strong correlation between greater gender equality and GDP.[4]

Figure 1: Gender Gap and Per Capita GDP

WomenEmpowermentEconGrowth_WEFGenderGapReport2007Source: World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report 2007

How gender-equal access yields economic and social benefits

The overall benefit of improving women’s access to education and economic inputs is well documented.[5] Education not only makes women more productive workers, but it also has broader benefits. A year of primary education corresponds to a 10 to 20 percent increase in wages later in life, while a single year of secondary education increases wages by another 15 to 25 percent.[6] An additional year of a woman’s education also correlates with a 5 to 10 percent reduction in the risk of infant mortality for her children, and to a reduction in fertility rates and maternal mortality.

Moreover, there is a strong connection between improvements in women’s status and autonomy and investments in their children’s health and education (especially girls).[7] Mothers who had access to education are more than twice as likely to send their own children to school as mothers with no education. Women also tend to spend a greater portion of their income on family necessities including food, and improvements in women’s status corresponds to lower rates of child malnutrition.[8]

Studies also show that gender inequality in education directly harms economic growth by lowering the average level of human capital.[9] In the Asia-Pacific region it is estimated that between $16-30 billion is lost annually as a result of gender gaps in education.[10]

Equal access to economic inputs is also crucial. For example, the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that agricultural output could increase by 2.5 to 4 percent in developing countries if women farmers had the same access as men to agriculture inputs such as land and fertilizers.  Figure 2 below maps out the relationship between gender equality and poverty reduction.

Figure 2: Relationship Between Gender Equality and Poverty Reduction

RelationshipGenderEqualityPovertyReduction_UNWTOGlobalReportWomenInTourism2010
Source: UNWTO. Global Report on Women in Tourism, 2010

Ultimately, the global evidence indicates that gender equality is fundamental to whether societies thrive or not,[11] and a failure to develop and utilize the capabilities of its female population can be understood as a key inhibitor of Pakistan’s growth. Empowering women should be understood as a “prerequisite for sustainable development.” Therefore, if Pakistan’s policy makers are serious about maximizing growth, they cannot afford to treat women’s empowerment as a tangential issue. Policies to empower women and remove the barriers they face in the labor market must be top priorities. Moreover, investments in women generally create larger economic returns than those in men, making programs that target women a wiser investment in resource-strapped countries like Pakistan.[12]

A future blog will specifically address the implications of women’s empowerment for growth in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Lauren Woodbury holds a Master of Public Policy and is currently the Program Manager at the Women’s Health Intervention and Development Initiative.

[1] Malhotra, A. and Schuler S.R. (2005) Women’s Empowerment as a Variable in International Development. in Narayan, D. (2005). Measuring Empowerment: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. The World Bank. p. 73

[2] See for example Doepke, M. and Tertilt, M. (2014). Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development? Working Paper 19888. National Bureau of Economic Research. Cambridge, MA.;  Kabeer, N., 2005, “Is Microfinance a ‘Magic Bullet’ for Women’s Empowerment? Analysis of Findings from South Asia,” Economic and Political Weekly.; Lawson, S., 2008, “Women Hold Up Half the Sky”, Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No.164.; and Duflo, E., 2012, “Women Empowerment and Economic Development,” Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4: pp. 1051-079.

[3] USAID. (July 2007). Pakistan’s Agenda for Action, Developing the Trade and Business Environment 2007 Assessment, Booz Allen and Hamilton.

[4] The author modeled per capita GDP and GGI score data for several additional years and found the correlation remained consistent.

[5] Cuberes, D. and Teignier-Baque, M. (2011). Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Background Paper for the World Development Report 2012.

[6] Sperling, G. and Herz, B. (2004). What Works in Girls’ Education: Evidence and Policies from the Developing World. Council on Foreign Relations.

[7] Durrant, V. and Sathar, Z. (2000). Greater investments in children through women’s empowerment: a key to demographic change in Pakistan? Population Council Policy Research Division. New York.

[8] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). (2011). The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011: Women in Agriculture- Closing the Gender Gap for Development.

[9] Klasen,S. (2002). Low Schooling for Girls, Slower Growth for All? Cross-Country Evidence on the Effect of Gender Inequality in Education on Economic Development. The World Bank Economic Review. Vol. 16, No. 3

[10] WEF p. 39

[11] WEF. p. 29

[12] Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). (2008). Gender and Sustainable Development: Maximizing the Economic, Social, and Environment Role of Women. p. 18