22 November 2021
Karachi Floods.
Karachi floods at the slightest of rains. Karachiites have historically tolerated this because flooding usually lasts for a few days with bearable aftereffects. However, in 2020, the rains were exceptionally heavy...
Read More22 November 2021
The Knot of Ecological Time: An Outlet, an Election, and an Irrigation Office
In 2015, local elections were held in Pakistan, ten years after the previous ones in 2005 during General Pervez Musharraf’s military rule. Local government elections...
Read More3 November 2021
Can Cash Transfers Increase Women’s Grassroots Political Participation? Survey Evidence From Pakistan
Over the past two decades, Pakistan has experienced a ‘paradigm’ shift in its approach to social protection ( Gazdar, 2011 ). Prior to the creation of the Benazir Income Support...
Read More3 November 2021
Demanding Power in Pakistan
What does the politics of energy tell us about the relationship of the Pakistani state with its citizens? With loadshedding in the news again, it is worth looking at the preceding two decades to assess whether any substantive change in this relationship has taken place...
Read More15 October 2021
Mapping Urban Living Standards in Developing Countries with Energy Consumption Data
Rapid urbanization in low and middle-income countries is contributing to the ‘urbanization of poverty’. Yet the true scale and nature of this challenge are unknown. Census data are infrequent and household surveys...
Read More15 October 2021
The Road to ‘Good’ Teaching in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Public Schools
Between 2010 and 2018, there appeared to be some very exciting and frenetic reform efforts unfolding across the school education sector in the Punjab. Moving the needle on school access and learning outcomes, it seemed, was as aspiration closest to the hearts...
Read More1 October 2021
Delayed enrollment and out-of-school adolescents – the missing link
In Pakistan, 26% of children in the 5-16 age cohort have never been to a school. This translates into 16 million children (out of a total of 20 million children who are out of school) as reported in The Missing Third...
Read More1 October 2021
From Ivory Towers To Building Blocks
Today, we see bright, knowledgeable folks of all ages, male and female, who know and understand education far better than those with decision-making powers. Almost all come from a segment of society that has benefitted from...
Read More17 September 2021
Using Cash Transfer Programs to Get Children Back to School from Work
The prevalence of child labour in Pakistan is very high: up to 22% of children between the ages of 5 and 14 years are engaged in the worst form of child labour, including bonded labour in agriculture and brick kilns...
Read More17 September 2021
Why did Covid-19 increase women’s care and housework in Pakistan?
Covid-19 lockdown measures resulted in an increase in care and housework in homes around the world. But with the greater presence of men at home as a result of lockdown and job losses, why are women...
Read More3 September 2021
How did Covid-19 affect women’s autonomy and access to healthcare in Pakistan?
With Pakistan facing a fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and new restrictions being imposed in major cities, research from the IDS-led Action for Empowerment and Accountability programme sheds new light on the gendered impacts and experiences of the pandemic in urban Pakistan...
Read More3 September 2021
What about these Covid-19 learning losses? Lessons from the 2005 Pakistan Earthquake
As educational institutions across Pakistan slowly reopen for a new academic year, an underlying anxiety is taking root: by how much has the learning of Pakistani students been set back? If lessons from recent scholarship are anything to go by, our youngest children...
Read More11 August 2021
Education and Women’s Labor Force Participation
There remains an overwhelming need to reduce the gender gap in labor force participation rates in Pakistan. As of 2021, women’s participation rates remain at around 22 pc with the country recording the slowest progress in closing the gender gap in the Economic Participation...
Read More11 August 2021
Are the walls of civic spaces closing in on women in Pakistan?
In a study conducted as part of the Action for Empowerment and Accountability multi-country research programme, we found that Covid-19 has accelerated the shrinking of civic space in Pakistan. A narrowing civic space...
Read More23 July 2021
Learning to Labour: samples of life in Pakistan under Covid-19
Policy decisions are expected to be made after a rigorous cost benefit analysis. All trade-offs are carefully weighed. Prior experience and empirical evidence are also factored in. However, for some decisions, costs and benefits hardly break even. Enforcing country-wide lockdowns to contain Covid-19 spread...
Read More23 July 2021
Exploring ‘Spaces’ of Learning: Girls’ Education during COVID in Pakistan
Any continuous area or expanse which is available for consumption is typically referred to as ‘space’. In the Urdu language, this can translate to ‘khalaa’ understood as the ‘absence’ of forms, but at the same time generative of other or newer forms, much like silence in a musical composition...
Read More9 July 2021
Where does Pakistan’s electricity go?
Electricity is the wheel that drives all facets of our daily lives such as production, consumption, communication, transportation and routine financial transactions. Despite its key role in powering the national economy, Pakistan’s electricity sector continues its struggle with significant challenges. Whether these manifest as costly...
Read More9 July 2021
Why Do Income and Wealth Inequalities Matter for Pakistan?
Inequality has emerged as a major global challenge around the world, and reducing inequalities within and amongst countries has been recognized as a UN SDG goal (no. 10). Growing levels of inequality tend to create poverty because money continues to move from those who must spend...
Read More29 June 2021
Determinants of Working Preferences Amongst Pakistani Women: Insights from Covid-19 Lockdowns
In April 2020, following a national lockdown due to Covid-19, numerous jobs across Pakistan became home-based. Although this represented a significant disruption to all sectors and genders, women seemed to become especially ...
Read More29 June 2021
Double Burdens and Dual Identities: Pakistani Working Women and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Past crises in Pakistan have never been gender-neutral and women have suffered disproportionately for a long time (Tariq and Bibler, 2020). Indeed, evidence from previous disasters and pandemics suggests that women are more vulnerable...
Read More9 June 2021
Education or Employment – which is more critical for the empowerment of Pakistani women?
In 1992, Larry Summers in his lecture at the Annual Pakistan Society of Development Economics titled, “Investing in all the people”, presented a compelling argument in favor of girls’ education for development. The main academic debates...
Read More9 June 2021
Trust, State Capacity, and Administrative Burden in Pakistan’s Immunization Program
Vaccine hesitancy is a global phenomenon and one of particular concern at the present moment with the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines and their reception around the world. An extensive literature studies...
Read More26 May 2021
COVID in Pakistan: Stemming the Third Wave
More than a year into the pandemic, Pakistan is fighting the third ave that is sweeping across its main urban centres. The hospitalization statistics increased manifold compared to the first and the second wave. However, after a relentless increase, the statistics are now...
Read More26 May 2021
Covid-19 Gendered Exposure and Perceptions in Pakistan
The lived experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic are starkly divided along gender lines, and the pandemic has already exacerbated gender inequalities within the home and in the labour market across countries...
Read More12 May 2021
Lessons for Conducting Phone-based Surveys During Covid-19 and Beyond
To understand the gendered impacts and experiences of the pandemic in urban Pakistan and inform gender-sensitive policy responses, researchers from the Institute of Development Studies and IDEAS (working under the auspices of the Action for Empowerment...
Read More12 May 2021
Understanding Gendered Experiences and Impacts of Covid-19 in Pakistan
The lived experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic are starkly divided along gender lines, and the pandemic has already exacerbated gender inequalities within the home and in the labour market across countries...
Read More25 April 2021
COVID–19 & its Impact: Moving Beyond Standard Surveys
The COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented in several aspects. Even aside from its significant health impact, with 2.2 million deaths so far, the economic fallout has created the worst recession since the great depression...
Read More25 April 2021
Informality and Covid-19 in Pakistan
About 60 percent of the world’s labour force works in the informal sector, typically outside the net of formal institutionalised relationships between workers, states and companies. This means that informal workers are often excluded from state-led social protection programmes and the various formal...
Read More2 April 2021
COVID-19 Pandemic's Economic Burden in Pakistan
COVID-19 is a health pandemic with economic consequences whose severity cannot be underestimated. Yet there is limited understanding of the pandemic’s effects on the economic lives of citizens. We address this gap using the Pakistan...
Read More2 April 2021
COVID-19 and the Future of Microfinance: Evidence and Insights from Pakistan
COVID-19 is a health pandemic with economic consequences whose severity cannot be underestimated. Yet there is limited understanding of the pandemic’s effects on the economic lives of citizens. In Pakistan, we are able to address this ...
Read More11 March 2021
Punjab’s Pollution Crisis: Information, Research and Policy Gaps
The authority to regulate pollution in Punjab rests with the provincial Environmental Protection Department (EPD). The EPD has a broad mandate to protect the environment, which includes informing the public on environmental issues and enforcing the Punjab Environmental Quality Standards (PEQS).
Read More15 March 2021
COVID-19 and Uneven Patterns of Economic Recovery
While the average people walking the streets of Pakistan may have taken off their mask and the news media may have moved on from discussing the economic impacts of COVID-19, data shows that the economic distress caused by the pandemic is far from over.
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