Under new World Bank threshold, over 44% Pakistanis now live below poverty line

Arab News

14 hours ago

ISLAMABAD: Around 44.7% of Pakistan's population is now considered to be living below the poverty line, according to the World Bank's newly updated global poverty threshold set at $4.20 per person per day and released this week.
Christina Wieser, senior economist at the World Bank and Tobias Haque, lead country economist for World Bank Pakistan, told media on Thursday the Bank was updating its global poverty lines to reflect changes in the cost of living and consumption habits of people around the world based on newly available data.
As price levels and the cost of basic needs across the world and within income groups evolve, global poverty lines are periodically updated to allow for global comparisons, Wieser said.
The new poverty lines are $3 per person per day for low-income countries (LIC), $4.20 for lower-middle-income countries (LMIC) and $8.30 for upper-middle-income countries (UMIC.)
Pakistan, with a population of over 240 million, is considered a lower-middle-income nation.
'The revisions help position Pakistan's poverty levels in a global context and underscore the importance of continued efforts to reduce vulnerability and improve resilience,' World Bank Country Director for Pakistan Najy Benhassine told media.
'The new figures reflect updated international thresholds and improved data from other countries, not a deterioration in living standards.'
As a lower-middle-income country, Pakistan's new poverty statistics reveal that the extreme poverty line, now at $3 per person per day, applies to 16.5% of its population, a substantial increase from 4.9% under the previous $2.15 benchmark.
The upper-middle-income poverty line, established at $8.30 per person per day, applies to 88.4% of the country's population.
As per the new poverty threshold, more than 107.95 million people in Pakistan are living below the poverty line, earning less than Rs1,200 a day, while more than 39.8 million people are included in the extreme poverty category.
The updated figures are part of the World Bank's Global Poverty June Update 2025, an initiative aimed at enhancing the precision and relevance of global poverty assessments.