 Dear students, in this module, we are going to talk about an important social issue of Pakistan which is poverty. As of 2015, almost one fourth of Pakistani population live below the poverty line. Nearly 4% live or are surviving even for $1.9 a day. It means that roughly speaking, they are earning merely 300 rupees per day. An average of 7% of babies die even before their fifth birthday. And 40% of Pakistani population is considered to be illiterate. And Pakistan has the lowest, has the highest population growth rate which is 2.1. So combining all these factors is contributing to our poverty. So if we talk about the distribution of poverty across all provinces, we will see that if we talk about Balochistan, it has the highest population living below the poverty line. That means the 80% of the total population of Balochistan does not have access to safe drinking water. 75% of villages have no electricity. Infant mortality rate in Balochistan is also one of the highest. It means that 108 children die out of 1,000. The 6% of land is cultivable with low productivity. Poverty in Sindh is reflected as 43% of Sindh population lives below the poverty line. The poorest district in the country is considered. And poverty rate in the rural areas of Sindh is considered to be 75% which is pretty much higher as compared to the urban areas. Whereas the 85% of the residents of Umar court districts in Sindh live below the poverty line. So Umar court is considered one of the poorest districts of Pakistan. 78.5% residents of Tata also live below the poverty line. So you see that these impoverished conditions are affecting the lives of people. And then poverty in, if we talk about poverty in KP or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, its rate is almost 49%. It means that almost half of the population of this district is living below the poverty line. And 2.5 million children in KP are out of school, which is also another cause of concern. And we in the recent past have observed more than 800 terrorist attacks took place merely between the 2013 and 2016. And that has greatly affected not only their lives but also their possibility to strive for the economic affairs for their families. And 42% of population of KP is illiterate whereas if we talk about the neonatal death ratio is 18% in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. If we talk about poverty in Punjab, it is 54.6% of the rural population of Punjab lives below the poverty line whereas 39% of Punjab population is illiterate. Only in 2020, 50,000 of criminal cases were registered throughout the Punjab. So you can see that there is a connection between poverty and increase in the crime rates. Out of which 3,631 murdered cases were also registered. So it is significantly impacting the whole life. It is rather forcing people to take the lives of other people merely as a means of subsistence.