Daily Times

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has officially revealed the provisional results of the sixth Population and Housing Census of Pakistan in it’s presentation to the Council of Common Interests (CCI) earlier this week. The results are rather depressing for a country like Pakistan where majority of the population lacks basic necessities of life. The results show that Pakistan has surged to a staggering 207.8 million, an increase of 75.4 million people in 19 years. This means that the country has seen a 57 percent increase in the population with an annual rate of 2.4 percent. The census data shows acceleration in the population growth rate of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), even as growth in Punjab and Sindh has slowed compared to previous years. The results show that 30.5m people reside in KP, 5m in FATA, 47.9m in Sindh, 12.3m in Balochistan, 2m in Islamabad, while Punjab houses 110 million people. The provisional results exclude data from Gilgit Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, which is likely to be included in the final report.

Meanwhile, women’s share in the total population has increased about 1 percent since 1998 — the female population stands at 101.314 million, which is 48.8 percent of the total headcount, according to the 2017 results. In 1998, the female population ratio was 47.9 percent. The data shows that there are 106.45m males, 101.31m females and 10,418 transgenders.

An increase in the urban-rural ratio has been observed in all administrative units except Islamabad, which nonetheless remains the second most urbanised unit of the country. Over 52 percent of Sindh’s residents live in urban areas, which has surpassed the capital territory as the most urbanised territory of Pakistan. Close to 36.4 percent of Pakistanis live in urban areas, the provisional results reveal Balochistan, the least urbanised of Pakistan’s provinces, has experienced the fastest average annual growth rate since 1998 of 3.37 percent. Punjab’s average annual growth rate remained the slowest at 2.13 percent, slightly below the national average of 2.4 percent. According to the summary results, the country’s predominant majority of 132.189 million still lives in rural areas. This ratio was 65.6 percent in 1998 when the last headcount was conducted. The CCI has decided that the statistics will further be debated in the Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee (IPCC) where a strategy and future course of action will be devised.

PBS conducted the exercise in two phases across Pakistan under the supervision of the military. The population results will be used to determine the federating units’ share in the federal divisible pool, allocations and delimitation of the National Assembly and provincial assemblies’ seats and determination of provincial job quotas. The census might result in a proportionate reduction in the allocation of the National Assembly seats of Punjab, as well as its share in the federal divisible pool, although the overall number of seats of all the federating units would boost due to a 75.4 million increase in the population over the past 19 years. About 82 percent of the federal divisible pool is distributed on the basis of population.

For a country like Pakistan, population growth at the rate of 2.4 percent has eroded fruits of higher economic growth. In a ‘capital poor’ and technologically backward country, rapid growth of population reduces output by lowering the per capita availability of capital and diminishes the availability of capital per head, which further reduces the productivity of labour force. As a result, income is reduced and capacity for savings is diminished which, in turn, adversely affects capital formation. Due to higher population growth rate, investment requirements are beyond investing capacity in the country. Rapid growth in population increases the requirements of demographic investment, which at the same time reduces the capacity of the people to save. This creates a serious imbalance between the requirements and the availability of investible funds, hence the entire investment is absorbed by demographic need and nothing is left for economic development.

In a country like Pakistan, the number of job seekers is expanding so fast that despite all efforts towards planned development, it has not been possible to provide employment to all. Unemployment, underemployment and disguised employment are our common features today. 2.4 percent annual increase in population means more mouths to feed. Being an agricultural country and despite all our efforts for raising agricultural production, we are not able to fully feed our population. Food scarcity effects economic development, inadequate supply of food leads to undernourishment of the people, which lowers their productivity. It further reduces the production capacity of the workers, and the deficiency of food compels to import food grains and that places as unnecessary strain on their foreign exchange resources.

The government cannot ignore or shelve the problem of population explosion. For the entire development of the country depends on how effectively this is curtailed

It is agreed that the rapid growth of population is largely responsible for the perpetuation of a vicious cycle of poverty in developing countries like Pakistan. With a higher population, people spend a major part of their income on bringing up their children, which results in maintaining the savings and rate of capital formation at low level, reduction in per capita income, rise in general price levels leading to a sharp rise in cost of living. Pakistan being declared a welfare state in the constitution is pledged to meet social needs of the people adequately and for this the government has to spend a lot on providing basic facilities like education, housing and medical aid. However, the rapid increase in population makes this responsibility a more daunting task.

More important than anything else is that population explosion is the key reason for illiteracy in Pakistan. People prefer to engage their children in economic activities, rather than providing them with education. The government cannot ignore or shelve the problem of population explosion, for the entire development of the country depends on how effectively it is curtailed. Although Pakistan has witnessed higher economic growth, it is still unable to adjust its economic structure. Higher population growth has implications on natural resources. Pakistan could not replicate industrial countries’ transition because of its inability to modernise agriculture or develop an industrial base. In Pakistan this high-rate population growth is a cause for poverty, environmental degradation and high debt levels. It is high time that the government, both federal and the provincial, adopt official programmes to build public opinion in reduction towards birth rate so that the population can fit in well with the evolving pattern of our developing economy.

The writer is a PhD Political Science, and a civil servant based in Islamabad. He can be reached at zafarkhansafdar@yahoo.com

Published in Daily Times, August 30^th 2017.