Khuzdar and Rawalpindi
Among Pakistan's provincial districts the poverty headcount runs from 9.6 per cent in Rawalpindi to 93.8 in Khuzdar: fewer than one person in ten against more than nine in ten. Khuzdar's poor are deprived in two thirds of what the index measures, and nearly all of them lack clean fuel, sanitation and adequate housing at the same time.
| Indicator | Khuzdar | Rawalpindi | Pakistan | Against national |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multidimensional poverty headcount | 93.8% | 9.6% | 41.2% | |
| Deprived in clean cooking fuel | 92.5% | 4.3% | 34.7% | |
| Deprived in sanitation | 92.8% | 5.1% | 26.8% | |
| Deprived in years of schooling | 75.6% | 5.8% | 26.8% | |
| Deprived in water | 17.2% | 2.3% | 7.5% | |
| Deprived in electricity | 0.6% | 0.2% | 3.6% | |
| Never attended school | 79.9% | 17.2% | 40.5% | |
| Female literacy | 31.4% | 78.4% | 51.9% | |
Khuzdar's two low components are low for reasons the questionnaire builds in. Water deprivation reads 17.2 per cent, thirty-sixth of 119 districts, against first on cooking fuel, sanitation and housing, because the indicator asks whether the source is improved, and a covered well or a hand pump passes even where nothing is piped: 7.0 per cent of Khuzdar's households have piped water. Electricity reads 0.6 per cent because the survey asks whether the household has a connection, not how many hours a day current flows through it. Both biases run the same way, understating deprivation where infrastructure exists on paper. The other five components are large enough that no wording could rescue them.
Khuzdar has the highest poverty headcount of the 119 districts with full survey samples and Rawalpindi the lowest outside the capital territory: 93.8 against 9.6 per cent. The index multiplies that headcount by the average share of the weighted indicators the poor are deprived in, 67.7 in Khuzdar against 43.5 in Rawalpindi; a household counts as poor once it is deprived in a third of them, so Rawalpindi's few poor sit just past that threshold. Two neighbouring facts keep the ranking honest. Dera Bugti tops the composite index, 0.671 against Khuzdar's 0.635, because its poverty is deeper even though less of the district is poor. And Islamabad's headcount is lower than Rawalpindi's, 6.0 per cent; this page anchors on the headcount, and on districts rather than the capital territory. The instruments that share no data with the survey agree about the gap. Census 2023 puts female literacy at 31.4 per cent against 78.4, and counts 997,214 people in Khuzdar against 6.1 million in Rawalpindi. The geography is no accident at either end: Khuzdar sits in the Balochistan highlands halfway between Quetta and Karachi, while Rawalpindi sits on the Potohar plateau beside the capital, with Attock, Chakwal and Jhelum, three more of the eight least-poor districts, around it. The survey records 93.7 per cent of Khuzdar's women as never having attended school, against 23.5 in Rawalpindi.