In 1800, the population of the area of modern-day Pakistan was estimated to be just over 13 million. Population growth in the 19th century would be gradual in the region, rising to just 19 million at the turn of the century. In the early 1800s, the British Empire slowly consolidated power in the region, eventually controlling the region of Pakistan from the mid-19th century onwards, as part of the British Raj. From the 1930s on, the population's growth rate would increase as improvements in healthcare (particularly vaccination) and sanitation would lead to lower infant mortality rates and higher life expectancy. Independence In 1947, the Muslim-majority country of Pakistan gained independence from Britain, and split from the Hindu-majority country of India. In the next few years, upwards of ten million people migrated between the two nations, during a period that was blemished by widespread atrocities on both sides. Throughout this time, the region of Bangladesh was also a part Pakistan (as it also had a Muslim majority), known as East Pakistan; internal disputes between the two regions were persistent for over two decades, until 1971, when a short but bloody civil war resulted in Bangladesh's independence. Political disputes between Pakistan and India also created tension in the first few decades of independence, even boiling over into some relatively small-scale conflicts, although there was some economic progress and improvements in quality of life for Pakistan's citizens. The late 20th century was also characterized by several attempts to become democratic, but with intermittent periods of military rule. Between independence and the end of the century, Pakistan's population had grown more than four times in total. Pakistan today Since 2008, Pakistan has been a functioning democracy, with an emerging economy and increasing international prominence. Despite the emergence of a successful middle-class, this is prosperity is not reflected in all areas of the population as almost a quarter still live in poverty, and Pakistan ranks in the bottom 20% of countries according to the Human Development Index. In 2020, Pakistan is thought to have a total population of over 220 million people, making it the fifth-most populous country in the world.

Rural population (% of total population) in Pakistan was reported at 61.64 % in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Pakistan - Rural population - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on September of 2025.

Population, female (% of total population) in Pakistan was reported at 49.28 % in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Pakistan - Population, female (% of total) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on September of 2025.

In 1800, the population of the area of modern-day Bangladesh was estimated to be just over 19 million, a figure which would rise steadily throughout the 19th century, reaching over 26 million by 1900. At the time, Bangladesh was the eastern part of the Bengal region in the British Raj, and had the most-concentrated Muslim population in the subcontinent's east. At the turn of the 20th century, the British colonial administration believed that east Bengal was economically lagging behind the west, and Bengal was partitioned in 1905 as a means of improving the region's development. East Bengal then became the only Muslim-majority state in the eastern Raj, which led to socioeconomic tensions between the Hindu upper classes and the general population. Bengal Famine During the Second World War, over 2.5 million men from across the British Raj enlisted in the British Army and their involvement was fundamental to the war effort. The war, however, had devastating consequences for the Bengal region, as the famine of 1943-1944 resulted in the deaths of up to three million people (with over two thirds thought to have been in the east) due to starvation and malnutrition-related disease. As the population boomed in the 1930s, East Bengal's mismanaged and underdeveloped agricultural sector could not sustain this growth; by 1942, food shortages spread across the region, millions began migrating in search of food and work, and colonial mismanagement exacerbated this further. On the brink of famine in early-1943, authorities in India called for aid and permission to redirect their own resources from the war effort to combat the famine, however these were mostly rejected by authorities in London. While the exact extent of each of these factors on causing the famine remains a topic of debate, the general consensus is that the British War Cabinet's refusal to send food or aid was the most decisive. Food shortages did not dissipate until late 1943, however famine deaths persisted for another year. Partition to independence Following the war, the movement for Indian independence reached its final stages as the process of British decolonization began. Unrest between the Raj's Muslim and Hindu populations led to the creation of two separate states in1947; the Muslim-majority regions became East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now Pakistan), separated by the Hindu-majority India. Although East Pakistan's population was larger, power lay with the military in the west, and authorities grew increasingly suppressive and neglectful of the eastern province in the following years. This reached a tipping point when authorities failed to respond adequately to the Bhola cyclone in 1970, which claimed over half a million lives in the Bengal region, and again when they failed to respect the results of the 1970 election, in which the Bengal party Awami League won the majority of seats. Bangladeshi independence was claimed the following March, leading to a brutal war between East and West Pakistan that claimed between 1.5 and three million deaths in just nine months. The war also saw over half of the country displaced, widespread atrocities, and the systematic rape of hundreds of thousands of women. As the war spilled over into India, their forces joined on the side of Bangladesh, and Pakistan was defeated two weeks later. An additional famine in 1974 claimed the lives of several hundred thousand people, meaning that the early 1970s was one of the most devastating periods in the country's history. Independent Bangladesh In the first decades of independence, Bangladesh's political hierarchy was particularly unstable and two of its presidents were assassinated in military coups. Since transitioning to parliamentary democracy in the 1990s, things have become comparatively stable, although political turmoil, violence, and corruption are persistent challenges. As Bangladesh continues to modernize and industrialize, living standards have increased and individual wealth has risen. Service industries have emerged to facilitate the demands of Bangladesh's developing economy, while manufacturing industries, particularly textiles, remain strong. Declining fertility rates have seen natural population growth fall in recent years, although the influx of Myanmar's Rohingya population due to the displacement crisis has seen upwards of one million refugees arrive in the country since 2017. In 2020, it is estimated that Bangladesh has a population of approximately 165 million people.

Abstract

The Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS) was conducted jointly by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS), Government of Pakistan, and the World Bank. The survey was part of the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) household surveys that have been conducted in a number of developing countries with the assistance of the World Bank. The purpose of these surveys is to provide policy makers and researchers with individual, household, and community level data needed to analyse the impact of policy initiatives on living standards of households. The Pakistan Integrated Household Survey was carried out in 1991. This nationwide survey gathered individual and household level data using a multi-purpose household questionnaire. Topics covered included housing conditions, education, health, employment characteristics, self-employment activities, consumption, migration, fertility, credit and savings, and household energy consumption. Community level and price data were also collected during the course of the survey.

Geographic coverage

National

Analysis unit

Households

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

(a) SAMPLE FRAME:

The sample for the PIHS was drawn using a multi-stage stratified sampling procedure from the Master Sample Frame developed by FBS based on the 1981 Population Census. This sample frame covers all four provinces (Punjab, Sindh, NWFP, and Balochistan) and both urban and rural areas. Excluded, however, are the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, military restricted areas, the districts of Kohistan, Chitral and Malakand and protected areas of NWFP. According to the FBS, the population of the excluded areas amounts to about 4 percent of the total population of Pakistan. Also excluded are households which depend entirely on charity for their living. The sample frame consists of three main domains:

(a) the self-representing cities (b) other urban areas (c) rural areas.

These domains are further split up into a number of smaller strata based on the system used by the Government to divide the country into administrative units. The four provinces of Pakistan mentioned above are divided into 20 divisions altogether; each of these divisions in turn is then further split into several districts. The system used to divide the sample frame into the three domains and the various strata. The sample frame consists of 88 strata altogether. Households in each stratum of the sample frame are exclusively and exhaustively divided into PSUs. In urban areas, each city or town is divided into a number of enumeration blocks with well-defined boundaries and maps. Each enumeration block consists of about 200-250 households and is taken to be a separate PSU. The list of enumeration blocks is updated every five years or so, with the list used for the PIHS having been modified on the basis of the Census of Establishments conducted in 1988. In rural areas, demarcation of PSUs has been done on the basis of the list of villages/mouzas/dehs published by the Population Census Organization based on the 1981 Census. Each of these villages/mouzas/dehs is taken to be a separate PSU. Altogether, the sample frame consists of approximately 18,000 urban and 43,000 rural PSUs.

(b) SAMPLE SELECTION:

The PIHS sample comprised 4,800 households drawn from 300 PSUs throughout the country. Sample PSUs were divided equally between urban and rural areas, with at least two PSUs selected from each of the strata. Selection of PSUs from within each stratum was carried out using the probability proportional to estimated size method. In urban areas, estimates of the size of PSUs were based on the household count as found during the 1988 Census of Establishments. In rural areas, these estimates were based on the population count during the 1981 Census. Once sample PSUs had been identified, a listing of all households residing in the PSU was made in all those PSUs where such a listing exercise had not been undertaken recently. Using systematic sampling with a random start, a short-list of 24 households was prepared for each PSU. Sixteen households from this list were selected to be interviewed from the PSU; every third household on the list was designated as a replacement household to be interviewed only if it was not possible to interview either of the two households immediately preceding it on the list. As a result of replacing households that could not be interviewed because of non-responses, temporary absence, and other such reasons, the actual number of households interviewed during the survey - 4,794 - was very close to the planned sample size of 4,800 households. Moreover, following a pre-determined procedure for replacing households had the added advantage of minimizing any biases that may otherwise have arisen had field teams been allowed more discretion in choosing substitute households.

(c) SAMPLE DESIGN EFFECTS:

The three-stage stratified sampling procedure outlined above has several advantages from the point of view of survey organization and implementation. Using this procedure ensures that all regions or strata deemed important are represented in the sample drawn for the survey. Picking clusters of households or PSUs in the various strata rather than directly drawing households randomly from throughout the country greatly reduces travel time and cost. Finally, selecting a fixed number of households in each PSU makes it easier to distribute the workload evenly amongst field teams. However, in using this procedure to select the sample for the survey, two important matters need to be given consideration: (a) sampling weights or raising factors have to be first calculated to get national estimates from the survey data; and (b) the standard errors for estimates obtained from the data need to be adjusted to take account for the use of this procedure.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Sampling error estimates

The PIHS sample was designed to yield representative statistics at the national and urban/rural) levels. Care however should be taken when interpreting results for smaller analytic domains as the sample was not designed to be representative at a more disaggregated level. Thus, even with the use of the sampling weights, statistics for the smaller provinces such as Balochistan are likely to have high standard errors given the relatively small sample size in these domains. In this regard, it is important to note that when calculating standard errors for estimates derived from the PIHS data, allowance must be made for the fact that the survey used a multi-staged sampling procedure. Calculating standard errors using methods outlined in elementary statistical textbooks is likely to underestimate the true magnitude of errors as the techniques presented in these books often assume that simple random selection was used when drawing the sample.

The share of urban population in Pakistan stood at ***** percent in 2023. In a steady upward trend, the share rose by ***** percentage points from 1960.

According to the 2021 Census, 81.7% of the population of England and Wales was white, 9.3% Asian, 4.0% black, 2.9% mixed and 2.1% from other ethnic groups.

In the Pakistan, the male population aged between 20 and 24 amounted to about **** percent of the total male population in 2023. In contrast, the male population aged between 20 and 24 in Hong Kong amounted to about *** percent of the total male population in 2023. The female Gen Z population in the Asia-Pacific region took up a smaller share among the female population overall compared to their male counterparts.

With almost all major religions being practiced throughout the country, India is known for its religious diversity. Islam makes up the highest share among minority faiths in the country. According to the Indian census of 2011, the Muslim population in Uttar Pradesh more than ** million, making it the state with the most Muslims.

Socio-economic conditions of Muslims
Muslims seem to lag behind every other religious community in India in terms of living standards, financial stability, education and other aspects, thereby showing poor performance in most of the fields. According to a national survey, 17 percent of the Muslims were categorized under the lowest wealth index, which indicates poor socio-economic conditions.

Growth of Muslim population in India
Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions worldwide. According to India’s census, the Muslim population has witnessed a negative decadal growth of more than ** percent from 1951 to 1960, presumably due to the partitions forming Pakistan and Bangladesh. The population showed a positive and steady growth since 1961, making up ** percent of the total population of India . Even though people following Islam were estimated to grow significantly, they would still remain a minority in India compared to *** billion Hindus by 2050.

In 2023, agriculture contributed around 23.33 percent to the GDP of Pakistan, 20.68 percent came from the industry, and over half of the economy’s contribution to GDP came from the services sector. Divisions of the economy There are three main sectors of economy: The primary sector encompassed agriculture, fishing and mining. The secondary sector is the manufacturing sector, also known as the industry sector; and last but not least, the tertiary sector, alias the services sector, which includes services and intangible goods, like tourism, financial services, or telecommunications. Today, most developed countries have a well-established services sector that contributes the lion’s share to their GDP. On the other hand, economies that still need support and are still developing typically rely on agriculture to fuel their economy. If they transition to a developed nation, it is usually because their economy is now able to focus on services as an economic driver. Pakistan’s economic driver Although Pakistan is not considered a fully developed nation yet, over half of its annual GDP is now generated by the services sector. However, the primary sector plays an important role for the country: It is still responsible for almost a quarter of GDP contribution, and it employs almost half of Pakistan’s workforce. Pakistan is rich in arable land, which explains why the majority of the Pakistani population lives in rural areas, producing and selling sugarcane, wheat, cotton, and rice, which are also exported to other countries.

According to the 2021 Census, London was the most ethnically diverse region in England and Wales – 63.2% of residents identified with an ethnic minority group.

Abstract

The objective of the Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS), a national sample survey, is to provide household and community level data which can be used to monitor, evaluate, and assess the impact of Social Action Program (SAP). Policymakers need to know; whether the poor have benefited from the program or whether increased government expenditure on the social sectors has been captured by the better off. In order to do this, a measure of living standards is needed so that benefits from public investment in social services can be compared across different income groups. For this purpose, PIHS includes a measure of household consumption (expenditure on goods and services) against which many of the outcome variables are tabulated. More generally, data collected in this survey also provides a valuable data base that can also be used to carry out research on a wide range of topics and issues.

Geographic coverage

National

Analysis unit

• Households
• Individuals

Universe

The universe of PIH Survey consists of all urban and rural areas of all four provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, FATA and Northern Areas as defined by the Provincial Governments. Military restricted areas have been excluded from the scope of the survey.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sampling Frame:

Separate sampling frames have been used in the survey for urban areas and rural areas as under.

Urban area:

FBS has developed its own urban area frame. This frame has been developed adopting Quick Count Record Survey techniques. According to this method, all urban areas know as cities/towns of the urban domain of the sampling frame have been divided into small compact areas known as enumeration blocks (E.Bs). Each enumeration block comprises about 200-250 households. Each Enumeration block has been divided into low, middle and high-income group, keeping in view the status of the majority of households. It will be used for drawing samples from the urban areas. There are 22800 enumeration blocks in all urban areas of the country.

Rural areas:

With regard to the rural areas, the lists of villages/mouzas/dehs according to population Census, 1998 have been used as sampling frame. In this frame, each village/mouza/deh is identifiable by its name, Had Bast number and Cadastral map etc. There are 50,588 mouzas/villages/dehs in the rural sub-universe of the survey

Sample size and its Allocation:

In view of the variability for the characteristics for which estimates are prepared, population distribution, field resources available and reliability constraints a sample size of 1,6400 households was considered appropriate to provide reliable estimates of key characteristics. The entire sample of households ((SSUs) has been drawn from 1150 Primary Sampling Units (SSUs) out of which 500 are urban and 650 are rural. This sample size has been considered sufficient to produce estimates of key variables at national and provincial level at 95% level of confidence with 5% to 7% margin of error. Due to security situation prevailing in FATA, 8 sample villages were not enumerated. Similarly, 90 sample households were not covered due to non-response/closed/non-contact and non-cooperation from the respondents in this Survey.The total number of sampling units covered is tabulated on page 21 of the HIES report

Stratification Plan:

Stratification scheme is adopted keeping in view the geographical level of estimates to be built-up and to control the variation in the under study characteristics of the survey population.The detail of the scheme is as under.

Urban Area:

With respect to the urban areas each of Karachi, Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Multan, Sialkot, Sargodha, Bahawalpur, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Peshawar, Quetta and Islamabad being large size cities have been treated as independent stratum. Each of these cities has further been substratified according to low, middle, high-income groups based on the information collected in respect of each enumeration block. After excluding the population of large sized cities the remaining urban population in each defunct administrative division in all provinces has been grouped and treated as an independent stratum. Each of Azad Jammu & Kashmir, FATA and Northern Areas has been considered as independent strata separately.

Rural Area:

In the rural areas, the population of each district in Punjab, Sindh and N.W.F.P Provinces has been grouped together to constitute a stratum. For Balochistan province each of defunct administrative Division has been taken as a stratum. Azad Jammu & Kashmir FATA and Northern Areas have been considered as independent strata in rural areas separately.

Sample Design:

A two-stage stratified sample design has been adopted for this survey.

Selection of primary sampling Units (PSUs): Enumeration blocks in the urban domain and mouzas/dehs/villages in rural domain have been taken as primary sampling units (PSUs). Sample PSUs from each ultimate stratum/sub-stratum have been selected by probability proportional to size (PPS) method of sampling scheme. In this survey population of rural areas and households for urban areas have been adopted as measure of size for selecting Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) from the strata/ sub-strata formed in urban and rural subuniverses of the survey.

Selection of Secondary Sampling Units (SSUs): Households within each sample Primary Sampling Units (PSU) have been considered as secondary sampling units (SSUs). 16 and 12 households have been selected from each sample village and enumeration block respectively by random systematic sampling scheme with a random start.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The HIES questionnaire, revised to reflect integration with PIHS and improved data collection methods were used for the 2001-02 survey i.e. Income and Expenditure (Round- IV of PIHS). The questionnaire was split into two modules in order to obtain better quality of information separately from male and female respondents by the male and female enumerators respectively. Specifically, minor changes were made in the part containing the consumption expenditure items. To obtain the better quality of data from the well-informed female respondents, the relevant parts of consumption expenditure of food and non-food items have been included in the female part of the questionnaire. Information which is considered to be answered better by the male household respondents is included in the male part of the questionnaire. The structure of the new PIHS / HIES questionnaire used in 1998-99 and 2001-02 is shown in table 1.3 of the Survey Report

Response rate

90 sample households were not covered due to non-response/closed/non-contact and non-cooperation from the respondents in this Survey

39.8% of workers from the Indian ethnic group were in 'professional' jobs in 2021 – the highest percentage out of all ethnic groups in this role.

In 2020, Indonesia recorded the largest population of Muslims worldwide, with around 239 million. This was followed with around 226.88 million Muslims in Pakistan and 213 million Muslims in India.

In 2022, the highest and lowest rates of economic inactivity were in the combined Pakistani and Bangladeshi (33%) and white 'other’ (15%) ethnic groups.

In the 3 years to March 2021, black households were most likely out of all ethnic groups to have a weekly income of under £600.

Which county has the most Facebook users? There are more than 383 million Facebook users in India alone, making it the leading country in terms of Facebook audience size. To put this into context, if India’s Facebook audience were a country, then it would be ranked third in terms of largest population worldwide. Apart from India, there are several other markets with more than 100 million Facebook users each: The United States, Indonesia, and Brazil with 196.9 million, 122.3 million, and 111.65 million Facebook users respectively. Facebook – the most used social media Meta, the company that was previously called Facebook, owns four of the most popular social media platforms worldwide, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram. As of the third quarter of 2021, there were around 3.5 billion cumulative monthly users of the company’s products worldwide. With around 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social media worldwide. With an audience of this scale, it is no surprise that the vast majority of Facebook’s revenue is generated through advertising. Facebook usage by device As of July 2021, it was found that 98.5 percent of active users accessed their Facebook account from mobile devices. In fact, almost 81.8 percent of Facebook audiences worldwide access the platform only via mobile phone. Facebook is not only available through mobile browser as the company has published several mobile apps for users to access their products and services. As of the third quarter 2021, the four core Meta products were leading the ranking of most downloaded mobile apps worldwide, with WhatsApp amassing approximately six billion downloads.

In 2023, the median age of the population in Sri Lanka was **** years. Contrastingly, the median age of the population in Pakistan was **** years in 2023.

As of 2024, Romanians were Italy's largest foreign population, with over one million Romanians living in Italy during the period considered. Albania and Morocco followed with 416,000 and 412,000 people, respectively. From a regional perspective, the Northern regions had the largest foreign population. Lombardy had some 1.1 million foreign residents, the largest in the country.

By the early 1870s, the child mortality rate of the area of modern-day Bangladesh was estimated to be just over five hundred deaths per thousand live births, meaning that more than half of all infants born in these years would not survive past their fifth birthday. Child mortality would steadily climb towards the end of the 19th century, to a rate of almost 57 percent, as a series of famines would result in significant declines in access to nutrition and the increased displacement of the population. However, after peaking at just over 565 deaths per thousand births at the turn of the century, the British colonial administration partitioned the Bengal region (a large part of which lies in present-day India), which would begin to bring some bureaucratic stability to the region, improving healthcare and sanitation.

Child mortality would largely decline throughout the 20th century, with two temporary reversals in the late 1940s and early 1970s. The first of these can be attributed in part to disruptions in government services and mass displacement of the country’s population in the partitioning of India and Pakistan following their independence from the British Empire; during which time, present-day Bangladesh became East Pakistan. The second reversal would occur in the early 1970s, as a side effect for the Bangladesh Liberation War, the famine of 1974, and the subsequent transition to independence. Outside of these reversals, child mortality would decline significantly in the 20th century, and by the turn of the century, child mortality in Bangladesh would fall below one hundred deaths per thousand births; less than a fifth of the rate at the beginning of the century. In the past two decades, Bangladesh's child mortality has continued its decline to roughly a third of this rate, due to improvements in healthcare access and quality in the country; in 2020, it was estimated that for every thousand children born in Bangladesh, almost 97 percent will survive past the age of five years.