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Pakistan is confronting sloppy challenges and policy dilemmas for tracing the pathways out of poverty. Contrary to the traditional practice of addressing poverty as stock concept, this book has simultaneously addressed poverty both as stock and flow concept and also logically stitched together all the relevant issues in micro and macro contours across geographic regions and time. Results demonstrated that rural poverty is not only more than twice of the poverty in urban areas but its proportionate contribution to overall poverty increased gradually. Across different regions in the country, there are pronounced disparities in terms of income and consumption. Horizontal inequality in terms of education and health has reached an alarming level in rural areas which calls for prompt policy initiatives for containing the future violent conflict. There is substantial need of two pronged policy in which besides poverty reduction strategies, fiscal and monetary management should be made in such a way that the vulnerable poor in rural areas could be stopped for becoming poorer due to internal and external shocks.

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