Economic issues facing the new government (In Pakistan)

Matthew Heyes / 1 April / Population

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2008-weekly/busrev-31-03-2008/

Although this articles purpose is to examine the economic issues that the new government faces the problems regarding population statistics. Since the time of the first post-independence census in 1951 the population has increased from 37 million to a population of about 165 million today. This population is increasing between 2.1 and 2.5 percent annually, although it was around 3 percent 1 years ago, and is expected to double over the next twenty years and double again 20 years after that making Pakistan the worlds third most populated country, after China and India. The article states that no government has implemented population-planning policies to reduce this trend and remove Pakistan from the poverty trap.

If this trend is not rectified then the article sees Pakistan as remaining forever mired in poverty, and the income gap between the haves and have-nots will go on increasing, along with all the attendant social, economic, political and law and order tensions that this gap creates. With current levels of population growth Pakistan will need a continuing GDP growth rate of well over seven per cent a year to make any kind of dent in the number of people living below the poverty line.

The birth rate for Pakistan is five or six children per woman. This figure has fallen in the urban areas in recent years. In the rural areas, there is higher levels of poverty and a lack of education for women, the number of children that women typically bear has not gone down. Many see the key to lowering population growth rate as increasing education levels. Despite increased migration to the cities in the last twenty years, close to 70 per cent of Pakistan’s population still lives in the rural areas.

The world’s population more than doubled between 1950 and 2000, rising from 2.5 billion to 6 billion. In 1950 nearly a third of humankind lived in the industrial world; now it is below one-quarter. By 2020 it will be less than one-fifth. We need to ensure that these people are properly educated in an attempt to lower population growth and the subsequent problems a high level causes.