A A Conceptual Framework on the Determinants of Poverty and Its Impact on Households in Pakistan
Abstract

This paper discusses the multifaceted impact of socioeconomic problems, including low incomes, poor education, joblessness, and widespread poverty, on the effectiveness of the government in fulfilling its role as a governing and regulating agency. More than half of the population in urban and rural Pakistan subsists in poverty, which remains a grave challenge to the stability and advancement of the nation. Not only do these socioeconomic constraints compromise the health of individuals and communities, but also increase the challenges for the government to implement development programs, enforce laws, and maintain social order. Based on data collected from a cross-sectional survey administered to a statistically selected sample of 384 households, the study takes a quantitative approach. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was applied to analyze the data in order to identify trends and relationships between factors related to poverty and the effectiveness of the government. Findings reveal that the combination of low income, high unemployment, and poor education significantly incapacitates public compliance and institutional authority. By offering empirical evidence highlighting the compelling interrelationship between socioeconomic adversity and government functionality, this study contributes to the greater poverty discourse. Further, the research fills a huge gap in the knowledge base regarding the structural impacts of poverty in Pakistan and provides valuable data to social welfare organizations, development planners, and policymakers. The results emphasize the urgent necessity for comprehensive, multi-sectoral strategies to alleviate poverty as well as enhance governance
Downloads
References
Ahmed, A. U., & Tauseef, S. (2022). Climbing up the ladder and watching out for the fall: Poverty dynamics in rural Bangladesh. Social Indicators Research, 160(1), 309–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02808-2
Akerele, D., Momoh, S., Adewuyi, S. A., Phillip, B. B., & Ashaolu, O. F. (2012). Socioeconomic determinants of poverty among urban households in South‐West Nigeria. International Journal of Social Economics, 39(3), 168–181. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068291211199341
Baldwin, K., Williams, B., Sichko, C., Tsiboe, F., Toossi, S., Jones, J., Turner, D., & Skorbiansky, S. R. (2023). US Agricultural Policy Review. USDA. https://tinyurl.com/wancybkr
Beine, M., Bierlaire, M., & Docquier, F. (2025). New York, Abu Dhabi, London, or stay at home? Using a cross-nested logit model to identify complex substitution patterns in migration. Journal of Economic Geography, elbaf007. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbaf007
Beker, V. (2014). Piketty: Inequality, poverty and managerial capitalism. Real-World Economics Review, 69, 167–174.
Bourassa, K. J., Moffitt, T. E., Harrington, H., Houts, R., Poulton, R., Ramrakha, S., Rasmussen, L. J. H., Wertz, J., & Caspi, A. (2023). Childhood adversity and midlife health: Shining a light on the black box of psychosocial mechanisms. Prevention Science, 24(5), 817–828. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-022-01431-y
Bradshaw, J., & Nieuwenhuis, R. (2021). Poverty and the family in Europe. In N. F. Schneider & M. Kreyenfeld (Eds.), Research Handbook on the Sociology of the Family (pp. 400–416). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Brooks-Gunn, J., Klebanov, P., Liaw, F. R., & Duncan, G. (2021). Toward an understanding of the effects of poverty upon children. In B. S. Zuckerman, H. E. Fitzgerald & B. M. Lester (Eds.), Children of poverty (pp. 3-41). Routledge.
Chakravarty, S. R., Kanbur, R., & Mukherjee, D. (2006). Population growth and poverty measurement. Social Choice and Welfare, 26(3), 471–483. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-006-0081-7
Chen, S., & Ravallion, M. (2021). Reconciling the conflicting narratives on poverty in China. Journal of Development Economics, 153, Article e102711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102711
Chuang, S. (2021). The applications of constructivist learning theory and social learning theory on adult continuous development. Performance Improvement, 60(3), 6–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/pfi.21963
Coile, C., & Zhang, H. (2022). Recessions and retirement: New evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic (Working Paper No. WP2022-20). Wharton Pension Research Council. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4199666#
De Haas, H. (2020). Paradoxes of migration and development. In T. Bastia & R. Skeldon (Eds.), Routledge handbook of migration and development (pp. 17–31). Routledge.
Dieppe, A., Kilic C. S., & KIndberg-Hanlon, G. (2020). Global productivity: Trends, drivers, and policies. The World Bank. https://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/351491594482906845/Global-Productivity-Aggregate-Database.pdf
Dreher, A., Lang, V., Rosendorff, B. P., & Vreeland, J. R. (2022). Bilateral or multilateral? International financial flows and the dirty-work hypothesis. The Journal of Politics, 84(4), 1932–1946.
Fairlie, R. W. (2023). Evaluating entrepreneurship training: How important are field experiments for estimating impacts? Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 32(3), 607–635. https://doi.org/10.1111/jems.12420
Fishman, S. H., Hummer, R. A., Sierra, G., Hargrove, T., Powers, D. A., & Rogers, R. G. (2021). Race/ethnicity, maternal educational attainment, and infant mortality in the United States. Biodemography and Social Biology, 66(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/19485565.2020.1793659
Genda, T., Ichida, T., Sakisaka, S., Tanaka, E., Mochida, S., Ueno, Y., Inui, A., Egawa, H., Umeshita, K., Furukawa, H., Kawasaki, S., & Inomata, Y. (2020). Outcome of patients with acute liver failure awaiting liver transplantation in Japan. Hepatology Research, 50(10), 1186–1195. https://doi.org/10.1111/hepr.13549
Gorar, A. N., Nawaz, H. M. I., & Ali, M. (2024). Exploring the negative impact of traditional rituals on women of Sindh regarding Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”. Jahan-e-Tahqeeq, 7(2), 607–614. https://doi.org/10.61866/jt.v7i2.1563
Haddad, N., Andrianou, X., Parrish, C., Oikonomou, S., & Makris, K. C. (2022). An exposome-wide association study on body mass index in adolescents using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003–2004 and 2013–2014 data. Scientific Reports, 12(1), Article e8856. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12459-z
Hair, J. F., Jr., Howard, M. C., & Nitzl, C. (2020). Assessing measurement model quality in PLS-SEM using confirmatory composite analysis. Journal of Business Research, 109, 101–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.11.069
Harmon, H. L., & Johnson, J. D. (2025). Introduction to the Handbook on Rural and Remote Education. In J. D. Johnson & H. L. Harmon (Eds.), Handbook on rural and remote education (pp. 1–11). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Krejcie, R. V., & Morgan, D. W. (1970). Determining sample size for research activities. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 30(3), 607–610. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316447003000308
Krishna, A., & Shariff, A. (2011). The irrelevance of national strategies? Rural poverty dynamics in states and regions of India, 1993–2005. World Development, 39(4), 533–549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2010.08.011
Ledenko, M., & Patel, T. (2022). Poverty traps and mortality from liver diseases in the United States. The American Journal of Gastroenterology, 119(12), 2462–2470. https://doi.org/10.14309/ajg.0000000000002899
Lusardi, A., & Streeter, J. L. (2023). Financial literacy and financial well-being: Evidence from the US. Journal of Financial Literacy and Wellbeing, 1(2), 169–198. https://doi.org/10.1017/flw.2023.13
Marmot, M. (2006). Health in an unequal world: Social circumstances, biology and disease. Clinical Medicine, 6(6), 559–572. https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.6-6-559
Martins, N. O. (2022). Sustainability and development through the humanistic lens of Schumacher and Sen. Ecological Economics, 200, Article e107532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107532
Mhlanga, D. (2020). Financial inclusion and poverty reduction: Evidence from small scale agricultural sector in Manicaland Province of Zimbabwe [Doctoral dissertation, North-West University]. GoTriple. https://gotriple.eu/documents/ftnorthwestuniv%3Aoai%3Arepository.nwu.ac.za%3A10394%2F34615
Milanovic, B. (2022). After the financial crisis: The evolution of the global income distribution between 2008 and 2013. Review of Income and Wealth, 68(1), 43–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12516
Mirza, H., & Tasleem, Z. (2024). Enhancing university students' career orientation through personal growth tools: The moderating role of career self-management. Journal of Management and Research, 11(1), 114–148. https://doi.org/10.29145/jmr.111.05
Nannan, N., Laubscher, R., Nel, J. H., Neethling, I., Dhansay, M. A., Turawa, E. B., Labadarios, D., Pacella, R., Bradshaw, D., & Pillay-van Wyk, V. (2022). Estimating the changing burden of disease attributable to childhood stunting, wasting and underweight in South Africa for 2000, 2006 and 2012. South African Medical Journal, 112(8b), 676–683.
Neumark, D., & Shirley, P. (2022). Myth or measurement: What does the new minimum wage research say about minimum wages and job loss in the United States? Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 61(4), 384–417. https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12306
Pandey, J., & Nagesh, P. (2013). A study on student engagement and its linkages to traditional and reported measures of performance. Business and Management, 5(1), 284–300.
Pereira, J. M. M. (2020). The World Bank's ‘assault on poverty’as a political question (1968–81). Development and Change, 51(6), 1401–1428. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12615
Psacharopoulos, G., Collis, V., Patrinos, H. A., & Vegas, E. (2021). The COVID-19 cost of school closures in earnings and income across the world. Comparative Education Review, 65(2), 271–287.
Rapoport, A. (2020). Development of global identity in the social studies classroom. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 11(1), 1–20.
Ravallion, M., & Chen, S. (2022). Is that really a Kuznets curve? Turning points for income inequality in China. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 20(4), 749–776. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-022-09541-x
Rodrik, D. (2022). An industrial policy for good jobs. Brookings. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/rodrik_-_an_industrial_policy_for_good_jobs.pdf
Roine, J. (2024). Piketty and the distribution of wealth. In Inequality: Economic and social issues (pp. 59–74). Routledge.
Sen, A. (2006). Conceptualizing and measuring poverty. In D. B. Grusky, S. M. R. Kanbur, & A. K. Sen (Eds.), Poverty and inequality (pp. 30–46). Stanford University Press.
Stiglitz, J. E., & Kosenko, A. (2024). Robust theory and fragile practice: Information in a world of disinformation Part 1: Indirect communication. In D. R. Raban & J. Włodarczyk (Eds.), The Elgar companion to information economics (pp. 20–52). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Tasleem, Z., Nawaz, D., & Saif, A. (2024) Addressing violence against women: Impact of education and culture in Lahore, Pakistan. Governance and Society Review, 3(2), 99–11. https://doi.org/10.32350/gsr.32.05
Tasleem, Z., Tasleem, Z., Muhammad, S. A., & Hatim, M. (2022). The influence of Covid-19 on students’ learning in public universities in Pakistan. Journal of Education and Social Studies, 3(3), 332–339. https://doi.org/10.52223/jess.20223315
UNESCO. (2019). Global education monitoring report: Migration, displacement and education: Building bridges not walls. https://gem-report-2019.unesco.org/
UNESCO. (2021). The United Nations world water development report 2021: Valuing water. United Nations. https://www.unesco.org/reports/wwdr/2021/en
Van der Heijden, J. E. (2020). Period warriors on Instagram popular feminism, digital activism & period poverty [Master's thesis, Utrecht University]. Utrecht University. https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/36546
Villani, A. (2024). Legal-economic fragilities in contemporary thought. How to explain inequality: Thomas Piketty's contribution. Sociology & Social Work Review, 8(1), 35–60.
Walker, S. E., Bennett, N., Smith, E. A., Nuckols, T., Narayana, A., Lee, J., & Bailey, K. M. (2024). Unintended consequences of nature-based solutions: Social equity and flood buyouts. PLOS Climate, 3(7), Article e0000328. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000328
World Bank. (2018). The World Bank annual report 2018. https://www.worldbank.org/404_response.htm
World Bank. (2024). Women, Business and the Law 2024. World Bank Group. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/853a55af-f1ba-4979-949c-61979af2fbb9
Copyright (c) 2025 Zerish

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.