Water, Sanitation, and Malnutrition in Pakistan: Challenge for Sustainable Development

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the water, sanitation, and malnutrition situation in Pakistan and to evaluate the sustainable development goals situation. To find the association, this study applies a chi-square test utilizing a sample of 3,575 children of age less than five years, extracted from the data of Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2017-18. The results of chi-square show that underweight and stunting have a significant association with water and sanitation in Pakistan. Pakistan's progress in sustainable development goals is yet slow, especially targets of goal 3 and goal 6, which are far behind other countries of the region. The study concludes that there is a need to allocate more resources in programs such as water, sanitation, nutrition, and poverty reduction to uplift the socio-economic standard of the common folk.