Educational Inequality in Rural and Urban Sindh

The key development objective of Pakistan, since itsexistence, has been to reduce poverty, inequality and to improve thecondition of its people. While this goal seems very important in itselfyet is also necessary for the eradication of other social, political andeconomic problems. The objective to eradicate poverty has remained samebut methodology to analysing this has changed. It can be said thatfailure of most of the poverty strategies is due to lack of clear choiceof poverty definition. A sound development policy including povertyalleviation hinges upon accurate and well-defined measurements ofmultidimensional socio-economic characteristics which reflect the groundrealities confronting the poor and down trodden rather than using someabstract/income based criteria for poverty measurement. Conventionallywelfare has generally been measured using income or expenditurescriteria. Similarly, in Pakistan poverty has been measured mostly inuni-dimension, income or expenditures variables. However, recentliterature on poverty has pointed out some drawbacks in measuringuni-dimensional poverty in terms of money. It is argued thatuni-dimensional poverty measures are insufficient to understand thewellbeing of individuals. Poverty is a multidimensional concept ratherthan a unidimensional. Uni-dimensional poverty is unable to capture atrue picture of poverty because poverty is more than incomedeprivation