Mahbub ul Haq Research Centre at LUMS

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 ...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

(Excerpts from this article first appeared in the weekly newsletter for Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University)

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

This blog is based on the paper “Who can work and study from home in Pakistan: Evidence from a 2018–19 nationwide household survey” by Syed M. Hasan (LUMS), Attique ur Rehman (LUMS) and Wendong Zhang (Iowa State University) and published in World Development

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...

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...

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...

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...