 Dear students, in this module we are going to talk about one of the major social issues of Pakistan which is poverty. So as you know that globally more than 636 million people live below the poverty line. So it's a huge figure and around 10% of the population of the world population is unfortunately living in a very extreme poverty. So it means that they are relying on their means of subsistence on daily basis. And in 2018 almost 8% of the workers and their families lived on less than $1.9 a day which roughly speaking is 300 rupees per day. So most people living below the poverty line belong to the southern Asian region and sub-Saharan Africa. So these poverty statistics are important to globally contextualize Pakistan and where Pakistan is situated. But before we go further to talk about the Pakistan and its poverty dynamics, let's first define and let's first see that how poverty is defined by the different institutions. So according to word bank extreme poverty is living on less than $1.9 a day in the purchasing power parity whereas the moderate poverty is defined as earning less than $3.10 a day. So these two yardsticks are considered standards based on which although there is no consensus on these yardsticks, but still these yardsticks are considered important to make the cross-country comparisons of poverty. Similarly according to United Nations poverty is considered the inability of having choices and opportunities which is the violation of human dignity. So keeping in view all these two important definitions, let's see that what is the situation of poverty in Pakistan. Almost one fourth of the population of Pakistan is living below the poverty line whereas 3.9% of employed people earn less than $2 a day and 20.3% of population of country is under nourished rather they are facing the malnourishment, they do not have enough food to eat, 37.6% of children below the age of 5 years are stunted rather they are not adequately being grown up they are having physical disabilities. So 140 maternal mortality rates per thousand live births are also the cause of concern and all these statistics are reflecting a pretty meager and rather pretty dangerous situation regarding poverty in Pakistan and according to some international organizations like UNDP 65.5% of the total population of Pakistan is currently earning less than $2 a day it's a huge claim that reflects that almost two third of our population is living hand to mouth they are just surviving on day to day basis and according to the social policy development center 88% of Baloch population 51% population of KPK 21% of Sin and 25% of Punjab population is prey to poverty and relative deprivation. So these statistics would reflect that Pakistan still needs a lot more to do in order to get out of poverty and according to Asian development bank 24.3% of population lives below the national poverty line and whereas almost 5% people are unemployed in the country and 2.3% of these employed people are also living on less than $2 a day. These all statistics reflect that poverty is one of the major cause of concern and it should be addressed not only by using the political will but also with the collective efforts of society.