Robustness of the Poverty Measures: Evidence from Farm Households in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

The use of a plethora of poverty indexes is sometimes fraught with difficulties. The purpose of this research was to quantitatively assess poverty and to examine the robustness of the poverty metrics. Selecting representative farm homes required a multistage sample technique, which was implemented. A total of 150 rural homes were surveyed using questionnaires. Stochastic dominance and the weighted poverty measures of Foster, Greer and Thorbecke were used in this work to examine the weighted poverty measures' resilience and sensitivity to changes in the poverty line. According to the findings, as people become older and their families get larger, the likelihood, severity, and depth of poverty increases. An asymptotic sampling distribution was utilized to infer whether poverty was larger across a variety of hypothetical poverty lines by stochastic dominance analysis. First-order stochastic dominance was found, with the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of households headed by people over 60 years old lying totally above the other distribution functions (CDFs). The CDF of single families was lower than the CDF of married households, according to the findings. At any poverty level, the CDF of families with more than 10 household members stochastically dominated those with fewer family members. Many households will be lifted out of poverty if poverty-reduction initiatives are targeted at those over 60 and those with big families.

Conflict Between State and Society in Pakistan: An Analysis of Psychosocial Dimensions

The state and society emerged simultaneously on 14th of August 1947. Before that day, Pakistani society had no shared existence and was only an “imagined community” in the literal sense of the phrase. The state of Pakistan became an administrative arrangement put in place by the British rulers to ensure their hold through a coercive dispensation. The change of regime did not immediately and fundamentally alter the nature or structure of the state. The psychosocial dimensions of values, attitudes and behaviour of the central authority and its structures remained colonial. The state, its institutions and officials were not “Pakistanized”; and the basic paradigm of relationship between state and the people has remained that of the “rulers and the ruled”. The state has manifested anti-people behaviour and shown proclivity to use coercion against the society. Judiciary, civil and military bureaucracy and police along with the co-opted clergyhave become deeply interwoven in maintaining their hold over the society. On the other hand, the institutions of society have not been able to develop values, attitudes, and behaviours that could create a caring, progressive, and pluralistic national state. This conflict in incompatible values, hostile attitudes and behaviours between state and society institutions and individuals is continuing. Consequently, the state has become fragile and the society has become more fragmented. The resolution of this conflict requires psychosocial transformation in individuals and institutions of the state and society.