Introduction
The Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey is one of the main mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of the PRSP and MDGs indicators. It provides a set of representative, population-based estimates of social indicators and their progress under the PRSP. For Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), UN has set 18 targets for 48 indicators for its member countries to achieve by 2015.Pakistan has committed to implement 16 targets, 37 indicators out of which 13 indicators are to be monitored through PSLM Surveys. These include intermediate as well as ‘output’ measures, which assess what is being provided by the social sectors – enrolment rates in education, for example. These include a range of ‘outcome’ measures, which assess the welfare of the population – Immunisation Rate, for example.
An important objective of the PSLM Survey is to try to establish what the distributional impact of PRSP has been. Policymakers need to know, for example, whether the poor have benefited from the programme or whether increased government expenditure on the social sectors has been captured by the better off.
In the remainder of this introduction, a description of the 2011-12 PSLM survey is provided. In the following chapters, data relating Education, health, immunisation, pre and postnatal care and Population welfare is given.