Modelling Gender Dimensions of the Impact of Economic Reforms in Pakistan

Abstract

Recently, gender-aware computable general equilibrium models (CGE) have been developed to analyse the impact of trade liberalization, with focus on a gender-disaggregated analysis of the production side of the economy. However, these studies ignore the gender-specific consumption effects due to the paucity of gender disaggregated data. We introduce intra-household allocation for the first time in a CGE-framework. The data is arranged in a gender-aware social accounting matrix, which reveals the hidden work of women (market and non-market). This study analyses the gender dimensions of the impact of economic reforms using three types of poverty indicators - FGT, capability, and relative time poverty - calculated on the basis of the simulation results. The study mainly found out that both trade liberalization and cuts in government expenditure are pro-rich. Within poor households, both policies hurt women more than men. Despite declines in absolute poverty in both exercises, the gender composition of the poor population changes in the majority of households. In the trade liberalization exercise, poverty among women relative to men increases in poor households and decreases among the rich, leading to an overall increase in the relative poverty of women in Pakistan. However, in the fiscal adjustment exercise, the incidence of poverty remains constant. In both exercises, time poverty among women relative to men increases in rural areas and decreases in urban areas, leading to an increase in relative poverty among women in Pakistan. The poverty of capabilities among men and women increases in a similar way after trade liberalization when measured by the infant mortality rate, but it affects women more negatively when measured by the literacy rate. Cuts in government expenditure also increase capability poverty among women more than men in both regions and in Pakistan as a whole. The study concludes that prosperity (increase in income), as well as education, can help reduce the gender gap as poverty decreases in relatively rich households, whether it is measured in monetary terms, capability terms, or in terms of time-use.