Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1700 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2855 (Online) Vol.6, No.13, 2015 20 The Concept of Participatory Poverty: Evidence from Pakistan Muhammad Abrar-ul-haq Ph.D Scholar, School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti of Utara Malaysia Mohd Razani Mohd Jali Senior Lecture, School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia Gazi Md Nural Islam Associate Professor, School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia Abstract This paper presents the empirical findings on the participatory poverty and its causes among rural household in Bahawalpur Division, Punjab (Pakistan). It is based on primary data collected through household survey. Multistage random sampling technique was used for data collection and 600 household from two districts of Bahawalpur division were selected. An ordinal Logit regression approach was used to estimate the factors affecting the participatory poverty of rural household. Participation in Punchiat, relation with local governance, access to announce price by Government (for inputs) and access to support price by government (for outputs) were used as the proxy of participatory poverty. The estimates revealed that gender of head of household, household accessories, assets and property, average education of household, occupation of agriculture, household income and occupation of services reduce the participatory poverty among rural households. Keywords: Participatory Poverty Index; Support Price; Announce Price; Punchiat Participation; Agriculture Sector; JEL Classification: C01; C83; O13; O18; Introduction Poverty has many dimensions, like malnourishment, hunger, economic exploitation, no shelter, violence, no decision making in political system, poor living condition, no facility for school and uncertainty of tomorrow, etc. Powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom is another name of poverty. Poverty has many types varying from place to place and time to time and it has been portrayed in various manners. Poverty is the “incapability to maintain a minimum living standard anticipated with respect to basic consumption needs or some amount of income required for satisfying them (World Bank (2006). Poverty is usually alienated into two groups, absolute poverty and relative poverty. Absolute poverty is when people lack the basic necessities for survival. For instance they may be starving, lack clean water, proper housing, sufficient clothing or medicines and be struggling to stay alive 1 . Relative poverty is when a number of people’s approach of life and income is so much poorer than the common standard of living in the nation or area in which they survive that they resist to live a common life and to play a part in average economic, public and educational actions. A common view of poverty is that when one is unable to satisfy some certain basic requirements but poverty is not only the name of hunger, if people has no access to basic utilities provided by government and cannot participate in social or local decisions of community, they are poor because of their poor participation. That kind of poverty is called participatory poverty. They are excluded as they are not part of the networks which support most people in ordinary life, social networks, community and local infrastructure. Poverty is a very broad and wide concept: it includes not only hunger and shelter, but problems of social-local relationships, access to basic infrastructure of government and failures in social protection. In practice, the participatory poverty is a three-fold phenomenon. The first is participation in social decisions making. The second is access to basic infrastructure of government and third one is relation with local governance. All of them impact a person’s economic and social life. The most prominent studies carried out on poverty include those of Sabir (2004) investigate the current poverty profile and the determinants of small farmer’s poverty in Pakistan, Sabir et al, (2006) investigated the depth and severity of the poverty of small farmers by using head count ratio, Amjad and Kemal (1997) investigated the macroeconomic policies and its impact on poverty reduction in Pakistan. The main objective of the study, to identify those policies (especially at the macro level), which play a pivotal role in ensuring that the process of economic development and growth as a result real betterment the lives of people. In Pakistan, poverty has been higher in rural areas (38.65%) than urban areas (22.39%) 2 . The majority 1 European Anti-Poverty Network, 2010 2 Chudhary (2009)