Development Analysis of Pakistan Districts

Abstract

Development ranking is used to measure the level of development of an area. This paper analyses the measured level of development at the district level of Pakistan to show which districts are comparatively more developed and which are lagging behind. The current study has ranked all the districts of Pakistan in terms of development on multidimensional indicators by using the Pakistan Social and Living-Standard Measurement (PSLM) survey for the year 2019-20. The study has produced nineteen indicators relating to human resources and living standards and then ranked the 126 districts of Pakistan's development. The study has also used the parameters of intra-district inequality to adjust the district development indicators in order to investigate whether progress on the development indicators is distributed equitably or not. Such adjustment with inequality has significantly changed the development rank orders of districts, and many districts lost their positions on the development raking, though some of them went up and down in the ranking. The paper highlights the bottlenecks to development at the district level and identifies areas that require further exploration for the welfare of the people. Further, the paper findings will help policymakers in targeting the resources towards the areas where they are highly needed.