Food Insecurity, Socioeconomic Inequality and Sustainable Development in Pakistan

Overview

Food insecurity in Pakistan is a problem of unequal access, not insufficient food supply. Pakistan's Household Integrated Economic Survey 2024-25 records 24% of the population experiencing moderate food insecurity and a further 5% experiencing severe food insecurity. This brief argues that the gap between those figures and the country's actual food supply is explained by inequality: disparities in income, livelihood security, purchasing power, location and social protection determine which households can consistently access adequate food, and which cannot.

The brief traces this across several drivers, income and poverty, the quality and stability of livelihoods, food affordability under price inflation, spatial disparities between rural and urban areas, intra-household and gender dynamics, and the disproportionate impact of climate shocks such as the 2025 floods on households with the fewest resources to recover. It connects these drivers to Pakistan's progress on SDG 1, SDG 2 and SDG 10 in particular, and to the country's human capital outcomes, including child stunting and learning poverty, arguing that food insecurity is both a consequence of unequal development and a mechanism that reproduces it across generations.

The brief closes with seven recommendations addressing the fragmentation it identifies across Pakistan's existing food security, nutrition and social protection interventions: better-targeted and shock-responsive social protection, stronger protection of household purchasing power, closer links between food security and livelihood development, disaggregated monitoring using existing survey data, integration of climate-risk information into food security planning, and stronger policy and institutional coordination across the agencies involved.