Reflecting the Dynamics of Multidimensional Poverty in Shanties Community of Pakistan: An Evidence of Last Decade

Although exploring poverty dynamics has been crucial for policymakers and thinkers across the developing nations, no study has addressed poverty in a multidimensional context for Pakistan's shanty community, despite its significance. This study fills this critical gap by examining long- and short-run multidimensional poverty (MDP) dynamics of urban and rural shanties communities across Pakistan by using the Alkire and Foster (2011) indexing methodology and Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement nationwide cross-sectional survey data from 2010–2011 to 2019–2020. The temporal measurements depict the poverty dilemma mainly attributed to the rural phenomenon across the shanty's community. Nevertheless, provincial comparison analytical highlights reflect that during the given timespan, shanties residing in Punjab (Baluchistan) were mildly (severely) victims of MDP. However, with a decade-long time gap, 2010–2011 to 2019–2020, the trend of shanties community MDP has substantially diminished countrywide, at the provincial level, and across the regions, which has been strongly validated by the dimensional decomposition robust measures. Thus, policy derivation to reduce shanties MDP and materialize the sustainable development goal targets is required to uplift their living standard through employment in different sectors and socially lessen their deprivation in key factors, education, and health through different corrective measures.