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Patronage in Rural Punjab: Evidence from a New Household Survey Dataset
Azam Chaudhry and Kate Vyborny
Published:Sept 2013
The intervention of local elites is often cited as an impediment to policy
implementation in many developing countries. In this paper, we present initial
results from an original primary household dataset from eight tehsils of rural Punjab,
Pakistan. We examine descriptive statistics on patron–client interaction and
correlations between household characteristics and that relationship. The study raises
some key findings. First, households report connections with a range of officials; they
interact most heavily with local officials, but a large number of households also report
interacting with their provincial and national politicians. Second, many households
report receiving active assistance both from local officials and from provincial and
national politicians in accessing certain state services, in particular in applying for
national identity cards. Third, households report links with many patrons outside
their own biraderi or clan. Fourth, vulnerable households, such as landless and
female-headed households, appear less likely to interact with and less likely to receive
assistance from patrons, suggesting that patronage activity could increase the
inequality of outcomes. Fifth, better-off households appear more likely to assist
patrons in a range of areas. Finally, local officials and politicians had tended to
recommend candidates in the last election, and rural households were strongly
convinced that their vote was not secret from their patrons or officials. This is
possibly consistent with patronage-based politics and bloc voting.
KEYWORDS:
Patron,
client,
rural,
Pakistan.
JEL:
P16,
D7.
Historical Inequality and Intergenerational Educational Mobility: The Dynamics of Change in Rural Punjab
Ali Cheema and Muhammad Farooq Naseer
Published:Sept 2013
We analyze educational attainment over three generations in rural
Punjab, Pakistan, to determine if the fruits of post-independence development have
translated into comparable rates of educational and social opportunities for all
strata in the village economy. We show that the differences in class status
institutionalized at the time of colonial village settlement lead to a sustained
divergence in the rate of intergenerational educational mobility, with limited
mobility for nonproprietary and marginalized groups compared to proprietary
groups. Inter-class differences in the rate of mobility are higher in proprietary
landed estates where the colonial state had concentrated land rights and
governance in the hands of landowners compared to crown estates that had a more
egalitarian arrangement of land rights and governance. We find that the
divergence in inter-class mobility is worrying, so much so that the current
generation of marginalized households appears to have fallen a generation behind
in terms of educational attainment, even though it resides in the same villages as
the proprietary households.
KEYWORDS:
Inequality,
education,
development,
Pakistan.
JEL:
I25,
I21.
The State of Health in Pakistan: An Overview
Uzma Afzal and Anam Yusuf
Published:Sept 2013
Although the Millennium Development Goals provide countries with wellrounded
objectives for achieving human development over a period of 25 years,
Pakistan is not on track to achieving the health-related goals. With the eighth highest
newborn death rate in the world, in 2001–07 one in every ten children born in
Pakistan died before reaching the age of five. Similarly, women have a 1 in 80 chance
of dying of maternal health causes during reproductive life. Compared to other South
Asian countries, Pakistan currently lags behind in immunization coverage,
contraceptive use, and infant and child mortality rates. Expenditure as a percentage
of private expenditure on health is about 98 percent, positioning Pakistan among
those countries with the highest share of out-of-pocket payments relative to total
health expenditure (World Health Organization, 2009). Pakistan is also going
through an epidemiological transition where it faces the double burden of
communicable diseases combined with maternal and perinatal conditions, as well as
chronic, noninfectious diseases. The landscape of public health service delivery
presents an uneven distribution of resources between rural and urban areas: The
rural poor are at a clear disadvantage in terms of primary and tertiary health
services, and also fail to benefit fully from public programs such as the immunization
of children. The poor state of public facilities overall has contributed to the
diminished role of public health facilities, while the private sector’s role in the
provision of service delivery has increased enormously. Following the 18th
Amendment to the Constitution, the health sector has been devolved to the provinces,
but the distribution of responsibilities and sources of revenue generation between the
tiers remains unclear. A multipronged national health policy is needed that tackles
the abysmal child and maternal health indicators, and reduces the burden of disease.
Moreover, it is imperative to improve the provision of primary and tertiary
healthcare with a strong monitoring system in place.
KEYWORDS:
Millenium Development Goals,
public health,
Pakistan.
JEL:
I18.
Improving Public Health Delivery in Punjab, Pakistan: Issues and Opportunities
Michael Callen, Saad Gulzar, Ali Hasanain, Abdul Rehman Khan, Yasir Khan and Muhammad Zia Mehmood
Published:Sept 2013
Pakistan has a large and dispersed primary public health system that gives
citizens access to trained doctors and staff, and to subsidized medicines. However,
both the use of these facilities and health outcomes remain low. Improvements in
information and communications technology provide exciting opportunities to
leverage technology to improve management. This paper presents a detailed
qualitative and quantitative study of the institutional context in which such
interventions in the public health sector in Punjab would be trialed. We describe
the structure and management of primary healthcare facilities, present selected
results from a survey of a representative sample of basic health units, and identify
some key issues. We also report and discuss officials’ responses to the question of
how services might be improved.
KEYWORDS:
Healthcare infrastructure,
public sector management,
Pakistan.
JEL:
I18.
Increased Rural Connectivity and its Effects on Health Outcomes
Hadia Majid
Published:Sept 2013
This paper examines the effects of increased connectivity in rural areas on
child health outcomes. In particular, it studies whether improved access to markets
for rural areas through an upgraded road network and greater openness, as
measured by village electrification status, has had a positive impact on child health
outcomes and awareness of health practices such as immunization and prenatal
care. Using a 16-year panel dataset from rural Pakistan, we estimate two iterations
of a probit model, where one examines the probability of child i being vaccinated
and the second estimates the incidence of use of prenatal care. The results support
the hypothesis that greater connectivity, as measured by road connectivity and
electrification, improves health outcomes by increasing the likelihood of
immunization and uptake of prenatal care.
KEYWORDS:
Child immunization,
prenatal care,
access to markets,
electrification,
rural Pakistan.
JEL:
I10.
Published:Sept 2013
Pakistan has launched two far reaching social protection programs. The
federal government’s Benazir Income Support Program has, at its core, an
unconditional cash grant for the poorest households. Responding to the concern
that this runs the risk of creating a large pool of permanent government handout
recipients, the federal government has also launched an ambitious skills
development program. At the provincial level, the government of Punjab is
implementing skills development as social welfare in the four poorest Southern
Punjab districts. The paper discusses the structure of the two programs, their
success at reaching the poor and the monitoring challenges to assess their overall
effectiveness.
KEYWORDS:
Social protection,
targeted transfer program,
skills development,
Pakistan.
JEL:
R58,
020.
Human Development and Economic Uncertainties: Exploring Another Dimension of Development
Jamshed Y. Uppal and Syeda Rabab Mudakkar
Published:Sept 2013
This study makes the case that economic uncertainties—i.e., the extent to
which economies face systemic uncertainties—need to be considered another
dimension of human development because they render development vulnerable,
diminish social welfare, and constrain human capabilities. We propose a
methodology for adjusting the human development index (HDI) for economic
uncertainties, using the time variability of income changes as a proxy. We
construct an adjusted index associated with the income component for the 2011
HDI. Our analysis indicates that such an index contains additional information.
The percentage loss in the income component of the HDI seems to reflect the
variability in economic indicators arising from the political and economic
tribulations experienced by each country. In Pakistan’s case, the results of a timeseries
analysis of the percentage loss from the uncertainty adjustment appear to
closely trace the country’s political and economic upheavals.
KEYWORDS:
Human development index,
capabilities,
human development,
economic growth,
economic vulnerability,
uncertainty,
risk.
JEL:
D63,
I32,
I38.
Microinsurance in Pakistan: Progress, Problems, and Prospects
Theresa Thompson Chaudhry and Fazilda Nabeel
Published:Sept 2013
Microinsurance in Pakistan is still in its nascent stages. More than half of
the current microinsurance policies in effect in Pakistan are offered through the
Benazir Income Support Program (BISP), with the remainder provided in
conjunction with microcredit services offered by various microfinance institutions
(MFIs), microfinance banks, nongovernment organizations, and rural support
programs (RSPs). The policies offered by the microcredit sector are mainly creditlife
policies, which cover loan balances in the event of the borrower’s death. In
addition, some lenders—principally the RSPs—offer small health insurance
policies covering the hospitalization of the borrower and (sometimes) their spouse.
As catastrophic health expenses and deaths in the family are among the most
important economic stressors that households face, it makes sense that
microinsurance should first make inroads in these areas.
It is difficult to say what impact microinsurance has had in Pakistan, since
few rigorous evaluations have been undertaken to date. What we do know is that
utilization has been low, explained by providers as limited client awareness of the
benefits and coverage. In the short to medium term, microinsurance outreach can
be expanded by offering health microinsurance (HMI) coverage to microcredit
borrowers’ entire households, and by offering HMI to all community members
within an RSP, rather than only microloan borrowers and their spouses.
Partnering with mobile phone operators for automated, digital payments can also
significantly expand potential customer volume while reducing transaction costs.
HMIs might also be combined with health savings accounts that households can
use to pay for medications and outpatient services not covered by HMI plans.
Provinces could also leverage the existing database of poverty scorecards
implemented by BISP to channel partially government-subsidized microinsurance
policies toward poor households just above the BISP threshold.
KEYWORDS:
Microinsurance,
social insurance,
poor,
Pakistan.
JEL:
G21.
One-Step-Ahead Forecastability of GARCH (1,1): A Comparative Analysis of USD- and PKR-Based Exchange Rate Volatilities
Abdul Jalil Khan and Parvez Azim
Published:Jan - June 2013
This study aims to capture volatility patterns using GARCH (1,1) models.
It evaluates these models to obtain one-step-ahead forecastabilities by employing
four major forecasting evaluation criteria, and compares two different currencies—
the Pakistan rupee and the US dollar—as domestic and foreign currency-valued
exchange rates, respectively. The results show that using an international vehicle
currency is favorable in Pakistan’s context. However, the Kuwaiti dinar, Canadian
dollar, US dollar, Singapore dollar, Hong Kong dollar, and Malaysian ringgit are
found to be preferable when performing direct international transactions. Using
the root mean square errors and mean absolute errors techniques, the study also
assess the robustness of measuring one-step-ahead forecasts.
KEYWORDS:
Time series analysis,
GARCH models,
foreign exchange markets,
forecasting,
exchange rate volatility,
Pakistan.
JEL:
C53,
F31,
C22,
F37,
F44.
Interest Rate Pass-Through: Empirical Evidence from Pakistan
Sheikh Khurram Fazal and Muhammad Abdus Salam
Published:Jan - June 2013
This article empirically examines the interest rate pass‐through
mechanism for Pakistan, using six‐month treasury bills as a proxy for the policy
rate (the exogenous variable) and the weighted average lending rate and weighted
average deposit rate as endogenous variables representing the lending and deposit
channels, respectively. We use data for a six‐year period from June 2005 to May
2011, published by the central monetary authority in Pakistan. The widely
accepted error correction mechanism is used to examine the short‐run and longrun
pass‐through; a vector error correction mechanism impulse response function
helps measure the short‐run speed of the pass‐through. We find that there is an
incomplete pass‐through in Pakistan for both the lending and deposit channels. The
impact is greater on the lending channel than on the deposit channel in both the
short and long run, while the adjustment speed is higher for the lending channel.
KEYWORDS:
Interest rate pass‐through,
interest rate channel,
transmission mechanism,
monetary policy,
Pakistan.
JEL:
E58,
E43.