Adaad · Volume 1, Issue 1 · Friday 14 August 2026 · Launch issue
Data Darbar ↗ Aiwan-e-Jamhoor ↗ CoverContents Archive About
District profilePunjab

Rajanpur

The district where this issue's arguments meet: women recorded working more than almost anywhere in Punjab, educated less than almost anywhere in Pakistan — and rural female participation rising faster than nearly any district in the country.

Population2.38mn
Census 2023
Female LFP37.1%
LFS 2020–21
Female literacy28.2%
Census 2023
Poverty (MPI)69.3%
PSLM-based headcount
Indicators against province and country
IndicatorDistrictProvincePakistanAgainst national
Female labour force participation 37.1% 26.3% 21.4%
Literacy, population 10+ 36.1% 65.8% 59.8%
Female literacy 28.2% 59.8% 51.9%
Multidimensional poverty headcount 69.3% 31.7% 41.5%
Urban share 26.5% 40.7% 39.0%
Annual population growth 3.0% 2.5% 2.6%
Bars show the district's distance from the national figure; the centre line is the national value. Sources: Census 2023; LFS 2020–21 district tables; PSLM-based MPI via Data Darbar; the participation-change estimate is Adaad's (see piece 02).
Why this district is in the issue

Rajanpur threads the whole issue. Its recorded female participation — 37 per cent, fifteenth of the 131 districts the survey covers — sits beside female literacy of 28 per cent: work without education, most of it unpaid family labour on farms, the kind piece 02 argues adds workers without adding output per worker. Adaad's estimate puts the rise in its rural female participation at 23 percentage points since 2020-21, among the largest anywhere. Seven in ten of its people are multidimensionally poor. And its satellite record carries the Method Notebook's warning about granular data: the wealth index scores the near-dark De-Excluded Area as the district's richest corner. One district, counted three ways.