THE DETERMINANTS OF SUSTAINED POVERTY: A CASE STUDY DISTRICT MALAKAND

Abstract

This study uses secondary data from BISP to trace households and individuals living below poverty line in Union Council Hero shah, Malakand Region, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan and then to interview them based a questionnaire developed to investigate into and find out determinants of sustained poverty. These households and individuals have been receiving BISP financial support on a quarterly basis for the last ten years. The study uses Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) technique in its analysis. These analyses include regressing a poverty index and a poverty score constructed from ten basic development indicators on respectively on a number of variables. These variables include number of HH members, female to male gender ratio, number of working-age male, female to male gender ratio in the labor force within the sample, number of never-enrolled persons, the out of school children, permanent disability and disease, costs incurred on female as well as male weddings, costs incurred on an event of death in the household and whether the household or individual has a business plan. This study utilizes the Breusch-Pagan/oak-Weisberg test for heteroscedasticity, Cameron & Trivedi's decomposition of IM-test, Variance Inflation Factor test, Shapiro Wilk test for normality and the Regression Specification-Error Test. I find significant positive relationships of the gender ratio of female to male members within a household, permanent disability and disease prevalent in a household and the number of never-enrolled persons in a household with the Poverty Index and the Poverty Score. This study also faces limitations such as non-responsiveness and misreporting of information from the respondents for reasons such as the fear of losing BISP support if accurate and honest information is provided. This study recommends extensive research into the determinants of the sustained poverty among BISP beneficiaries as well as the design, mechanism and strategy of the support program per se in poverty eradication.

Key Words: BISP, Poverty, OLS, Malakand Region (KP, Pakistan)