Population is a security issue for Pakistan

Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), Islamabad

Population Affecting Healthy Living: Pakistan was a country of 34 million people in 1951, including the-then East Pakistan and now Bangladesh. By 2000, the population had risen to 144 million. Pakistan added 110 million Pakistanis in just four decades, and despite the recent decline in the rate of population growth from 3.2 percent to 2.1 percent, Pakistan is expected to have a population size of 224 – 226 million by 2020 and by 2025, population is estimated at a staggering 333 million. From 1981 to 1998, the rate of population growth was 2.69 percent criss-crossing all the way to 3.2 percent in 2002. At present, there are confirmed estimates that 70 percent of the Pakistani population is living either under, on or just above the poverty line and make two or less dollars a day. Forth-nine percent of the population is living absolutely below the poverty line. According to a Population Welfare study, “the impact of population growth on poverty is obvious, since poorer families, especially women and marginalized groups bear the burden of a large number of children with much fewer resources further adding to the spiral of poverty and deterioration in the status of women.” The same study established that the contraceptive prevalence is 30 percent which is nearly 120 percent lesser than the required standard to help reduce Pakistan’s population growth to an “acceptable level” of 1.2 percent. Because of repeated population explosions, Pakistan is faced with serious a socio-economic and a political crises.