Impact of Women Empowerment on Fertility Preferences in Pakistan

Reproduction is an important aspect of a women's life, unfortunately in Pakistan fertility rates are quite high in comparison to other developing countries as well as in comparison to the other South Asian countries. Different studies have suggested that women empowerment can help reduce fertility rates. The present study has attempted to analyze the role of women empowerment along with other socioeconomic indicators on three different dimensions of the fertility behavior i.e. Number of children born (current fertility status), ideal number of children and birth intervals (future fertility status. Data of Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2012-13 has been used. The analysis consists of two levels, at level one a descriptive analysis is carried out. As three different aspects of fertility are the count data. Therefore at the next stage models will be estimated by using poison regression technique and Incidence Rate Ratios (IRR) are reported. It has been found that women’s being empowered in financial matters, seeking health care and in household decision making are helpful in reducing fertility. Furthermore, participation in job by women, living in urban areas, having secondary or higher education, access to awareness created by the media, married at higher age are also significant factors in reducing fertility. However, women facing incidence of miscarriage or death of a child tends to increase the fertility. Study had found that wealth of the household, education of husband and having sons have very limited role on the fertility behavior.

An Appraisal of Illiteracy Reduction Plans and Designing a Low Cost Model to Improve Literacy Rate in Pakistan

Government of Pakistan has launched various illiteracy reduction plans from time to time to promote literacy rate in the country but these plans could not achieve the targets. This study was designed to appraise these illiteracy reduction plans and to design a low cost model to improve literacy rate in Pakistan. The main objectives of the study were: to appraise the illiteracy reduction plans introduced in Pakistan, from time to time, to identify the needs and problems of the direct affectees (all the illiterates above the age of 10 years), to know the ground realities regarding implementation of illiteracy reduction plans/projects at Government and NGOs level and to design a low cost model to improve the literacy rate in Pakistan. The population of the study was comprised of Educationists i.e. Ph.D. degree holders in Education, Executives working in the top level management in policy formation, plan designing, project development and program development, Executives working in National Planning Commission, Provincial Secretary, Additional Secretary, Deputy Secretary and EDOs (Education and literacy), Literacy teachers, Heads of different NGOs, Community representatives and Direct beneficiaries (the brick makers, manual workers, laborers, peasants etc). Snowball sampling technique was used to find the most relevant persons (respondents) for different illiteracy reduction programmes in different areas for the conduct of this research study. viA mixed-method research design was used i.e. data was quantitative and qualitative. For quantitative data a questionnaire was developed at five point rating scale ranging from ‘1’ indicating strongly disagree to ‘5’ indicating strongly agree; a selection of ‘3’ indicating uncertain/don’t know. For qualitative data some open ended questions were included in the questionnaire. An interview schedule was also developed for Head of NGOs, community representatives and direct beneficiaries. Data collection was started from the person who had been involved for long with the illiteracy eradication programmes. On his identification the other respondent was selected. Overall 1200 questionnaires were sent to the respondents but 998 questionnaires were got back. In this way, data was collected from 1348 (998 questionnaires and 350 interviews) respondents. Main findings of the study showed that need assessment was not carried out before launching illiteracy reduction programs, objectives of the illiteracy reduction programmes were not relevant to the literacy needs of the participants, local community was not involved in the running the literacy centers, religious leaders, intellectuals and retired personnel were not invited to support the illiteracy eradication programmes, and political instability in the country was a hurdle in the achievement of the targets of the illiteracy eradication programmes. In the light of the findings of the study, a low cost model was designed to improve the literacy rate in Pakistan. The proposed model was presented to 10 experts in the discipline of education for its validation. The model was improved in the light of experts’ opinion. They were satisfied that this low cost model will be useful for increasing the literacy rate in Pakistan.