‘That you have seven children’ was a family prayer in Punjab in British India of the early twentieth century, when the empire gave stipend to families with many male children. They were potential recruits for colonial armies. Although the British have gone for a long time, the echoes of this feeling seem to have remained during the century.
Today we are a population of 241.5 million and a promise for more, with a growth rate of 2.55 percent per year. Promising some as a demographic dividend that hopes to be used, it also presents significant challenges. The youth bulge is surprising; 26 percent of the population is between 15 and 29, and more than half (53.8pc) falls within the working age (15-59). The economic survey, 2025, highlights curiously this demographic dynamic as a “unique opportunity.”
Several government initiatives destined to unlock this potential are also highlighted by the survey. The National Commission for Vocational and Technical Training, especially under the Prime Minister’s Youth Skills Development Program, has trained tens of thousands of young people in emerging fields. Under the PMYSDP, a total of 72,362 have been especially trained in it. Looking towards the future, NavTTC aims to train 100,000 young people in IT high -tech skills, another 100,000 in traditional and 150,000 trades in industrial skills in the next three years. All these combined efforts aim to raise our qualified workforce to about half a million, 473,291, to be exact.
This number does not reach the unemployment challenge. Youth unemployment, according to the population and housing census of 2023, remains alarmingly high in 29 % among 15 to 24 years. To 16 million additional young people are not employed or in education, considered ‘inactive young people’, they reach their maximum point at 22.7 million in 2023. Unemployment is especially severe in Baluchistan and KP and in rural areas.
With inappropriate works in the market, poverty will surely increase. A recent World Bank report raises serious concerns. Due to an upward review of the poverty threshold, the poverty rate in Pakistan has increased from 39.8pc to 44.7pc to an income per day of $ 4.20. According to government estimates, using official data and family expenses survey 2018-19, the poverty rate is 21.9pc. Recent research from the Pakistan Development Economy Institute suggest that it could be as high as 39.5PC, with 70 % of people in Baluchistan, 48pc in KP, 45 percent percent in Sindh and 30pc in Punjab suffering from poverty. Rural areas have higher poverty rates than urban areas.
Regardless of what figures we want to believe, economic security is at risk.
We seem to know what to do. But what seems to be missing is political will.
Poverty toll is also visible in health metrics. Approximately 40 percent of children under five are atrophial, the highest in southern Asia. It is known that growth delay, mainly caused by malnutrition, suffocates cognitive and physical development. Atrophied children will become adults with lower levels of intelligence and with a diminished capacity to win, hindering productivity and long -term economic growth nationwide. Therefore, we are creating a vicious circle of economic deprivation, unemployment and underdevelopment.
The interconnection between economic deprivation and social disturbances is complex. Scholars discuss if poverty directly feeds terrorism. The Egyptian analyst, Dr. Hany Ali Nasira, reviewed the poverty rates of the countries that classified the first six in the global terrorism index for the 2020s to 2023 and found a strong correlation between poverty and terrorism. He argues that, although there are other causes that give rise to terrorism, such as crises, political instability and sectarian disagreements, external support for terrorist groups and governance, terrorist groups often exploit economic complaints. They promise employment or financial profits, turning poverty into a fertile field for recruitment.
The research of the University of Punjab also demonstrates that terrorism inflates uncertainty, deterring investments, foreigners and domestic, deepening unemployment and poverty, and further feeding a cycle of violence and underdevelopment. Mortal terrorist attacks in Baluchistan and KP exemplify these dynamics, threatening national security. The findings suggest that terrorism contributes and is exacerbated by poverty, creating a self -conforcio cycle that hinders economic development.
With our economic growth rate that cannot maintain the rhythm of our growing population, we must address the challenge that our “inactive young man” can represent for national security. The 2022-2026 National Security Policy also explicitly recognizes population growth as a destabilizing factor, particularly when intertwined with poverty, ethnic tensions and unequal development.
Almost all the other great Muslim nations, Bangladesh, Iran, Türkiye, Malaysia, Indonesia, have successfully implemented population reforms decades. It has helped them maintain their human development goals. While Pakistan classifies 168 of 193 countries in the 2025 human development index, Bangladesh is in 130, they will go to 75 years and Indonesia at age 113, to mention some. However, in Pakistan, the debate on the population continues. An urgent sense of crisis is still difficult to achieve. Whether we adopt ‘family health’ or ‘Tawazzun’, balanced coexistence between the population and the resources available as guiding principles, we must act decisively.
Four years ago, an editorial in Sunrise On July 11 (World Population Day) he suggested a ‘population emergency’. More conferences and more commitments assumed by government officials were held, on World Population Day this year. It seems that we know what to do, also detailed in the article published last November by the Population Council and UNFPA, entitled Pakistan@2050: Demographic change, future projections and development opportunities.
What seems to be missing is the political will to ‘take the moment’ defended by Dr. Zeba Sathar, country director of the Population Council in Sunrise In the important ‘day’, another day remembered but careless.
Let’s take advantage of the time for prayer in Punjab to stay in the next century. Let’s take advantage of the time for our own people to become a challenge for our national security.
The writer is a retired ambassador to Pakistan.
Posted in Dawn, July 28, 2025
