Search

In rural and low-income urban households, energy is 'women's business': women are responsible for providing energy, and use it for domestic chores and productive activities. However, the poor quality fuels many women use contribute to their time poverty, ill health, and level of drudgery. Despite these negative impacts, energy policy remains gender-blind. This can be attributed to the invisibility of women's needs to energy planners, stemming from a lack of appropriate gender-analysis tools to meet the particular data requirements of the energy sector. This article analyses why standard gender tools do not provide appropriate gender-disaggregated energy data, and describes a set of tools that have been developed for that purpose. The paper concludes with an evaluation of recent experiences testing the tools in Pakistan, India, and Nepal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding magnitude and Identification of factors that are strongly linked with the rural poverty is an important aspect in developing successful strategies intended for poverty. In this study we have also estimated poverty incidence, intensity and severity among the rural households in Athara Hazari (one of four sub district of Jhang, Punjab Province) along with the other demographic, social and socioeconomic factors of households that affect the poverty. The analysis of the study carried out on the basis of primary data and the same was collected through the structured and specifically designed questionnaires and document analysis. Multi-stage random sampling technique was employed to select 1000 household head as respondents from the different villages of study area. This study used poverty line Rs. 2478/- which was calculated by the Planning Commission of Pakistan. According to the survey conducted in 2017, 40.3% are below the Poverty line (15% people are extremely poor). Depth and severity are 34% and 11% respectively. Majority of families were headed by farmer, illiterate and aged persons and also all three measures, headcount index, depth and severity of poverty were worse among these households. Results of the logistic regression suggest that an increase in the landholding, livestock and total assets of the household have considerably decreasing the probability of being poor in the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess household poverty, sanitation and hygiene practices, and food security in both urban and rural settlements of district Peshawar. Methods: We conducted this cross-sectional study from March 2019 to October 2019 in the urban and rural households of Peshawar, KPK. Using stratified random sampling, 554 households (HH) having children and young adolescents of age 5-19 years, adult men > 19 -- 62 years, and adult women >19 - 62 years were included in this study. Data was collected using comprehensive tool comprised of all validated questionnaires and was analyzed using SPSS Version 24.0. Results: Within the urban clusters, the maximum number of households (n=29) were from Gari Baloch and the minimum number of households (n=7) were from Gulberg. In the rural clusters, the maximum number of households surveyed (n=41) were from Lamara, minimum(n=21) was from Chargula. The average age of household heads was 44.5 ±12.5 with mean age slightly higher in urban areas (45.1 ±11.8) compared to 44.0 ±13.2 in rural areas. The mean poverty score was 56.8 (±11.6) with 72.1% non-poor households, and 94.2% households being food secure. Handwashing practices were highly prevalent among all the HH, however, handwashing practices before eating were comparatively lower in all HH (45.2%), lowest (37.8%) among rural households. Conclusion: The findings of the study revealed both non-poor and food secure households with satisfactory water, hygiene and sanitation practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we try to indirectly quantify the welfare of people in Pakistan through measuring the food insecurity, malnutrition during last decade (2005-14). This study takes lead from earlier studies, in a sense; it covers two food price hike periods (2007 and 2011). So, it is important to understand, how food insecurity status and nutrition are affected by these shocks during this period. Thus, we use nationally representative data called as Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) from 2005-2014. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics collects this data in five rounds; 2005-06, 2007-08, 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2013-14 comprised 81102 households. Results from the headcount ratios suggest that over the period food insecurity trends of the households raised from (58%) to (77%). we find urban households are more food insecure over the time as compared to rural households. Whereas, in qualitative terms of food insecurity, we use two food diversification measures; one is dietary diversity score and second one is share of staple food in total calories consumed by household, suggest that households dietary diversity score is good on average that is 9 out of 10 food groups and on the whole it is slightly improved from (8.8 %) to (9%) in previous 10 years. Interestingly, when we analyze the share of staple food in total calories, results suggest that major portion of a household’s diet is consisting of staple food (wheat), (53%) and increased to (57%) from 2005 to 2014. We use the Heckman Approach to find out determinants of food insecurity. Results suggest that female headship plays a significant positive role in caloric intake, among the other variable head education, households’ member with basic education and higher education, live stock ownership, consumption of livestock produced at home, farming, consumption of food crop produced at home and foreign and domestic remittances plays a significant positive role in caloric intake of food insecure households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The key objective of this study is to develop a household Empowerment Index for a quick description of household empowerment. Household empowerment was gauged through the first-hand data gathered through face-to-face interview of household head form the rural households of Pakistan. In the process of data collection, multi-stage cluster sampling method was employed which involved twenty-four villages of southern Punjab and 600 heads of the household who were interviewed. With a view to assigning a weight of indicator variables, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied. The findings indicate that there are three pillars of the household empowerment: economic empowerment, social empowerment and above all political empowerment. The said three pillars are based upon the ten sub-pillars which further contain 42 indicators that contribute significantly to household empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We undertook an economic valuation of mangrove forests in Balochistan province of Pakistan drawing on primary data from a survey of 80 households depending on mangrove forests. It was found that the direct value of mangroves was USD 1,287 per hectare, while the total value for the village was calculated to be USD 4,419,935. We found that rich households made more absolute use of the mangrove products and services and the poor made more relative use. Any decrease in the quality of this ecosystem would expose the poor to the worst effects of poverty. We argue that investments in mangrove conservation under comanagement regime in this region of Pakistan make ecological and economic sense. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]