LAHORE: The central but uncomfortable question of 2025 is that whether Pakistan’s obsession with macroeconomic stabilisation come at the cost of poverty eradication. The evidence, both quantitative and lived, suggests yes.
In 2025, economic stabilisation increased poverty which should make planners one cannot stabilise an economy by destabilising lives. Poverty ignored today returns tomorrow as social breakdown, crime, extremism and despair.
Poverty is pain -- and a country that learns to live with this pain eventually loses its moral and economic compass. Not a statistic, not a chart, not a footnote in an IMF review -- but pain that gnaws at the body, the mind and the soul. It is the pain of too little food after too many hours of work; the humiliation of dependence; and the moral agony of choosing between medicine for a sick child and bread for the rest of the family. While the policymakers celebrated “economic stabilisation,” in 2025 this pain deepened quietly, persistently, and is largely invisibly.
The stabilisation has steadied balance sheets, but crushed households at the bottom. For the poor, stabilisation translated into costlier food, expensive electricity, shrinking job opportunities and vanishing safety nets. In 2025 working poverty had become the new normal. As one poor man from Pakistan once said, “The rich have one permanent job; the poor are rich in many jobs.” Millions were employed yet unable to afford basic nutrition. An employed individual still worrying about buying bread for his child is not an anomaly—it is the system working exactly as designed.
Supporters of the stabilisation-first approach argue that poverty also rose elsewhere. Indeed, India and Bangladesh were not immune to global shocks -- higher food prices, climate disruptions, and post-pandemic adjustments did strain vulnerable populations. But the difference lies in policy response. India expanded food transfers and rural employment schemes. Bangladesh protected export-linked jobs and prioritised social spending even under fiscal stress. Poverty pressures existed, but they were cushioned.
Pakistan, by contrast, withdrew the cushion. Social protection remained fragmented, underfunded, and erratic. Cash transfers lost purchasing power. Development spending -- critical for jobs, water, schools and clinics -- was slashed. Poverty was treated as a future problem, to be addressed once “stability” was achieved. But poverty does not wait.
Aggregate poverty numbers, however alarming, still tell only part of the story. Poverty is humiliation. It is the sense of being invisible. It is being forced to accept rudeness, insults and indifference when seeking help. It is hunger that is never satiated, sleep that never restores, fear that never leaves. As Amartya Sen reminds us, poverty is not merely low income; it is the loss of the ability to “go about without shame.”
Security, economic and social, is central to dignity. Poor people describe security as continuity of livelihood, predictability of relationships, and peace of mind. One bad crop can push a family into destitution; it takes three good harvests to recover. In Pakistan, climate shocks, illness, and job loss are not temporary setbacks -- they are life sentences. Women bear a disproportionate burden. They are more vulnerable to abuse at home, exploitation at work, and abandonment when widowed. Men, especially young men, face arbitrary policing and criminalisation.
This brings us to a harder, rarely discussed issue that is the role of the rich in perpetuating poverty. Pakistan’s elite did not grow poorer during stabilisation; many grew richer. Asset prices recovered faster than wages. Tax policy remained regressive, relying heavily on indirect taxes that punish consumption rather than wealth. Large landholders, traders, and rent-seeking sectors remained undertaxed. Corruption and abuse of power deepened exclusion, while fairness and accountability remained slogans.
Poverty is not accidental; it is structured. When growth is captured, taxes are skewed, and public services collapse, deprivation becomes permanent. Having ten daughters but no son still feels like having no children -- because patriarchy and poverty reinforce each other.
