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| September 15, 2005 | Thursday | Sha'aban 10, 1426 |
Pakistan slow at achieving MDG
ISLAMABAD, Sept 14: Pakistan has been ranked fractionally better than Nepal on Human Development Index (HDI) and looks to be slow at achieving the Millennium Development Goals, suggests the Human Development Report 2005 using the latest country level data.
Pakistan with a HDI value of 0.527 has been ranked 135, one rung above Nepal that has a value of 0.526.
This year’s Human Development Report launched here on Wednesday takes stock of human development, including progress towards the MDGs. Looking beyond statistics, it highlights the human costs of missed targets and broken promises.
Extreme inequality between countries and within countries is identified as one of the main barriers to human development and as a powerful brake on accelerated progress towards the MDGs. The MDG target for reducing child mortality will be missed.
On this score, the report brackets Pakistan with countries like Niger that ranked last in the Human Development Index that would achieve this goal between 2015 and 2040. Honduras and Vietnam have far lower levels of neonatal mortality than Pakistan.
Infant mortality rate given for Pakistan in the report is 81 per thousand live births, whereas the under-five mortality rate is 103 per thousand live births. Maternal mortality rate is shockingly as high as 530 per 100,000 live births. Thirty-eight per cent of the children under five are said to be underweight.
The MDG target of universal primary education looks to be quite far off as well. The adult and youth literacy rates are 48.7 per cent and 64.5 per cent respectively with a net primary enrolment ratio of 59 per cent.
In Pakistan, girls represent just 41 per cent of the primary school population in contrast to 45 per cent for African countries. Gender parity in Pakistan would have put another two million girls in schools.
Gender disparities are even wider at the secondary and tertiary levels. These deep gender disparities represent not just a violation of the universal right to education but also a threat to future human development prospects.
The MDG targets for gender parity in primary and secondary enrolment were supposed to be met by 2005. Gender-based education inequalities, the report says, have held back Pakistan’s economic development.
The rural-urban divide magnifies gender inequalities. In Pakistan the rural-urban gap in school attendance is 27 percentage points, but the gap between rural girls and urban boys is 47 percentage points. About 34.1 per cent of the country’s population lives in urban areas.
Pakistan has been ranked 68 on Human Poverty Index. About 13.4 per cent of the population is earning less than a dollar a day and 65.6 per cent have earnings less than US$2 a day.
According to National Poverty Line 32.6% of the population is below poverty line. Reducing poverty is another Millennium Development Goal.
Poorest 20 per cent take 8.8 per cent of the share of income, while in contrast the richest 20 per cent get 42.3 per cent of the income. This reflects the massive distortions in distribution of income and the situation looks further grim in the backdrop of the fact that 28.3 per cent of the income is pocketed by the richest 10 per cent as compared to the meagre 3.7 per cent that goes to the poorest 10 per cent.
The report suggests that extreme inequality is not just bad for poverty reduction, it is also bad for growth. The poorest tenant farmers pay 28 per cent of the value of their production to landlords, while other tenant farmers pay 8 per cent. Cash and crop transfers from poor tenant farmers to landlords are a major source of income poverty.
In terms of Gender Development Index Pakistan stands at 107. More Pakistani women are illiterate with literacy rate as low as 35.2 per cent for women. The females are also lagging behind when the gross enrolment ratio for all tiers of education is taken into consideration, which is 31 per cent. Women in the country are expected to live longer than men.
On the Gender Empowerment Measure ranking, Pakistan is placed at 71, but on Female Economic Activity Index Pakistan is ranked 129th.
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