Effects of Poverty Reduction Policies on Food Security and Sustainable Development in Rural Areas: Case of Southern Punjab, Pakistan

Poverty alleviation policies could affect occupation transition, but in many rural communities, the determinants of such processes have remained unclear. In Pakistan, government policies have been failing to achieve the desired poverty alleviation goal, but no study has so far unambiguously identified causal linkages between government interventions and livelihood choices of rural residents. In this paper, the authors attempt to shed light on the policy-poverty-sustainability trilemma pattern by revealing the reactions on poverty reduction measures in three rural districts of Southern Punjab state of Pakistan. 240 farmers and household heads were surveyed and grouped into the poor, middle, and upper-middle categories based on their attitude to the parameters of social, human, financial, physical, and natural capital. A multinomial logit method was employed to identify the factors of livelihood choice in each category. Among the poorest households, safety net policies demonstrated the most distinct anti-poverty effect. In the middle category, livelihood choice was adversely affected by drought, but positively by medical expenses, educational level, and family size. The availability of agricultural machinery, training programs, and loans had positive effects on livelihood choices in the upper-middle category. The variability of causal links between poverty alleviation forcers and actual livelihood behavior requires diversified anti-poverty interventions, suggested by the authors.