Usama Awan

Environment and air pollution: health services bequeath to grotesque menace

The objective of the study is to establish the link between air pollution, fossil fuel energy consumption, industrialization, alternative and nuclear energy, combustible renewable and wastes, urbanization, and resulting impact on health services in Malaysia. The study employed two-stage least square regression technique on the time series data from 1975 to 2012 to possibly minimize the problem of endogeniety in the health services model. The results in general show that air pollution and environmental indicators act as a strong contributor to influence Malaysian health services. Urbanization and nuclear energy consumption both significantly increases the life expectancy in Malaysia, while fertility rate decreases along with the increasing urbanization in a country. Fossil fuel energy consumption and industrialization both have an indirect relationship with the infant mortality rate, whereas, carbon dioxide emissions have a direct relationship with the sanitation facility in a country. The results conclude that balancing the air pollution, environment, and health services needs strong policy vistas on the end of the government officials.

Measuring pro-poor sectoral analysis for Pakistan: trickle down?

The study aims to establish a pro-poor growth index called the ‘Poverty Equivalent Growth Rate’, which considers both the extent of sectoral growth and the benefits reaching the poor in Pakistan, using 21 household surveys between 1964 and 2011. The result reveals that despite the positive signs in agriculture growth, the growth process may not be classifiable as pro-poor. The result points out that compared with the non-poor, the poor overall benefited less from the revitalisation of agricultural processes; however, the trend was reversed during 2002 to 2011 when the poverty equivalent growth rates are higher than the growth rate of industry, manufacturing, commodity producing and services value added, which shows sectoral growth favours the poor more than non-poor in Pakistan.