Findings of 2023 population census

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has recently disseminated the detailed results of the 7th Population and Housing Census of Pakistan, completed in 2023. This is the first digital Census in Pakistan and the largest in South Asia. There is need to recognize these extraordinary efforts by the leadership and the staff of the PBS. The key findings report is an outstanding publication.

However, many of the magnitudes emerging from the Census are worrying in character. There appears to have been a rise in the exponential annual population growth rate between the two Censuses of 2017 and 2023, respectively.

It is estimated at 2.55% in the 2023 Census whereas in the inter-Censal period of 1998 to 2017 it was reported at 2.40%. If the current growth rate of 2.55% persists than by 2047 the population of Pakistan will rise by more than 83% from 241.5 million to over 441 million. This will undoubtedly put severe pressure on the availability of food and other necessities in the country.

There is also substantial variation in the population growth rate of the provinces between 2017 and 2023. The province with the fastest population growth rate continues to be Balochistan, with a growth rate of 3.14%, followed by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa with a growth rate of 2.82%.

The two larger provinces, Punjab and Sindh, have significantly lower population growth rates of 2.48% and 2.53%, respectively. However, these growth rates are still higher than those observed in the previous Census.

Another worrying development is the visibly faster rate of urbanization. The growth rate of urban population has been reported at 3.59%, compared to 2.97% in the last Census. Consequently, there has been a quantum jump in the size of the urban population from 2017 to 2023 by over 18 million. The level of urbanization has reached 38.8%, compared to 36.4% six years ago.

The number of rural-urban migrants is estimated at over 6 million from 2017 to 2023. Consequently, the rate of growth of rural population has fallen to 1.86%, compared to 2.05% from 1998 to 2017. This highlights the diminishing capacity of the rural economy, especially agriculture, to provide livelihood to the local entrants in the rural labor force.

An analysis at the Provincial level reveals that the fastest rate of urbanization between 2017 and 2023 has taken place in Balochistan at 5.04% annually and in Punjab at 4.13%. It is 3.18% in Sindh. The big surprise is the decline in the share of the urban population in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa with the growth rate of urban population of only 0.71%. Sindh continues to be the most urbanized province with a share of urban population approaching 54%.

Turning to other key demographic indicators, there is need to focus on different aspects of the age distribution of population. The first indicator is the percentage of the population in the form of children from zero to 4 years. This percentage has increased from 14.11% in 2017 to 15.17% in 2023. This tends to indicate a rising fertility rate, leading to faster population growth.

The second key indicator in the age distribution is the share of youth population, aged 15 to 24 years. There was a ‘youth bulge’ reported in the 2017 Census, with the share rising to 19.21%. Fortunately, the share has fallen to 18.59% in the 2023 Census. This implies that the peak of the youth bulge has passed. This should limit in future the increase in the number of ‘idle’ youths in the country, estimated currently at over 18 million.

The perhaps surprising finding is the decline in average household size in the country. It has declined from 6.45 members on average in a household in 2017 to 6.30 in 2023. This tends to indicate a transition to more nuclear families than joint households. However, the decline is in rural areas. It has actually gone up from 6.20 to 6.24 in the urban areas.

A matter of some interest, especially in the presence of a faster rate of urbanization, is the population growth of cities, with population above 1 million, between 2017 and 2023. The findings are somewhat unexpected.

Despite a relatively fast rate of urbanization in Punjab, the two largest cities in the province, Lahore and Faisalabad, have shown relatively low growth rates of 2.61% and 2.32%, respectively.

However, the highest growth rate of the population of cities in Pakistan is observed in the case of Rawalpindi of as high as 7.84%. This is in sharp contrast to the population growth rate of only 1.55% in the sister-city of Islamabad. The other city with an extraordinarily high rate of population growth of 7.48% is Quetta. Karachi continues to expand at a moderate rate of 4%.

The exception is Peshawar which has seen a decline in population between 2017 and 2023. In this a reflection of exit of Afghan population or due to the breakdown of law and order, especially due to acts of terrorism, leading to migration?

We focus now on some of the indicators related to education. The first key indicator is the literacy rate. It has apparently increased only modestly from 58.91% in 2017 to 60.65% in 2023. Here again, there is a surprise. It has remained virtually unchanged at close to 68% in the case of males. Bulk of the increase in the literacy is in females. There is need for investigation as to why there has been no progress in literacy among males in Pakistan.

The next education indicator is the number of out-of-school children, aged 5 to 16 years. The 2023 Census reports the number at as many as 25.37 million children. This implies that almost 36% of the children have not had an opportunity to go to school and improve their lifetime prospects. The high incidence of out-out-school children is truly an indictment of the education system of Pakistan.

There are many other trends in the population, housing and access to services that have been quantified in the 2023 Census. These will be highlighted in a subsequent article.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024