An Empirical Analysis of Globalization-Poverty Nexus: Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract

Despite the significant progress that has been observed towards the Millennium goals, more than one billion people still live on less than 1.25 US dollars per day. A large body of the literature has focused on the growth effects of globalization and generally documents favourable effects of globalizing on economic growth. Does globalization reduce poverty? This question has received relatively less attention and the available evidence is not conclusive. This study investigates the impact of globalization on poverty in Pakistan using annual time series data from 1975 to 2018. The empirical analysis for the effect of globalization on poverty is based on the ARDL approach to cointegration. The empirical findings show that globalization exerts a significant adverse influence on the annual poverty of Pakistan. It implies that the ongoing process of globalization is leaving the poor of Pakistan behind. Globalization accentuates not ameliorates poverty and thus marginalizes the poor of Pakistan.