The Sindh government has initiated two projects, i.e. Union Council Based Poverty Reduction Programme (UCBPRP), and Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) to alleviate poverty in the province.

Initiated with the help of Sindh Rural Support Organization (SRSO) in 2009, the UCBPRP was initially launched in Kashmore-Kandhkot, and Shikarpur districts, which later expanded to Jacobabad with a total budget of over Rs 4 billion. It was also replicated in some target union councils of Sukkur and Khairpur districts with the core funding provided by the SRSO. The programme seeks to cushion a high and verifiable impact on poverty for a specific...

The target population in this study has been comprising all the eligible beneficiaries, who had received CIF or BISP or both in the following districts.

1. Kashmore-Kandhkot

2. Shikarpur

A Two-stage Stratified Random Sampling with Population Proportion to the Size has been adopted to achieve a good representative sample from the target population. This sampling technique is useful when we need to subdivide each stratum into further strata and also it is convenient to reduce the heterogeneity of the target population. In the first stage, 21 Villages have been randomly selected on the basis of geographical classification, which is 50% of the...

According to the World Bank, about 702.1 million people were living in extreme poverty in 2015, down from 1.75 billion in 1990. Among them, about 347.1 million people lived in Sub-Saharan Africa (35.2% of the population) and 231.3 million lived in South Asia (13.5% of the population). Between 1990 and 2015, the percentage of the world's population living in extreme poverty fell from 37.1% to 9.6%, falling below 10% for the first time (World Bank 2015).

The rural poor in the world are reportedly either the inhabitants of landlocked states, remote low potential marginal areas or less integrated areas. These...

Pakistan has a long history of poverty reduction policies, including “the Social Action Programme of the 1990s” which did not bring about the desired change in social indicators. The government took serious view of rise in poverty in the 1990s and launched the Interim Reduction Strategy Paper (IRSP) in 2001 focusing on the primary objective of reducing poverty and restoring economic stability. The Pakistan Rural Support Programme (PRSP) that was launched in 2003 for three years outlined a well-structured strategy for poverty reduction, with four pillars addressing different aspects of poverty: high economic growth; governance and consolidating devolution; investing in...

Annual income and expenditure is one of the best indicators for impact evaluation of any intervention. It can help us find the exact status of household (HH) before and after the intervention. In this study, we have utilized it to compare the status of the household, who received CIF, BISP and both.

The graph given below depicts the information of annual household income for the last 12 months of CIF beneficiaries. According to the graph, most of the household’s annual income lies in the range of 0 to 400,000 rupees. The annual average income of the household is 108,618.58 with...

If the results given in above table are compared with the CIF and BISP 2009 data with 2015 then in K-Kandhkot district a total of 11 (38 per cent) beneficiaries remained in the ‘extremely poor’ category (0-11) and 9 (31 per cent) in the chronically poor category (12-18) in 2015. There was no beneficiary in ‘transitory poor’ category (9-23) and non-poor categories (24-100) in 2009. A total of 7 (24 percent) and 2 (7 per cent) beneficiaries elevated to the transitory poor and non-poor categories, respectively. Similarly, in Shikarpur district, a total of 19 (45 per cent) beneficiaries were found...

The study shows that the projects like Community Investment Fund and Benazir Income Support Program are playing a vital and dominant role in poverty alleviation. That’s why, the government needs to expand these projects across the country as CIF is running only in a few districts of Sindh Province. Graduation rate of 52% in five years is something more than the country’s expectations. Another interesting finding is the graduation rate of those who received both Community Investment Fund and Benazir Income Support Program, which is 28% and comparatively lesser than CIF and BISP separately.

The government also needs to find...