Pakistan – Urban population to equal rural by 2030

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s urban population is likely to equal its rural population by 2030, according to a report titled ‘Life in the City: Pakistan in Focus’, released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The report was released to coincide with the launch of a UNFPA report on the global urban population, titled ‘Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth’, which says that more than half of the world’s total population will live in cities by 2008.

According to the report on Pakistan, the proportion of females is lowest in rural to urban migration and highest in rural to rural migration. The same pattern has been observed in India. In the rural-urban stream, the share of females is 51 percent in Pakistan. A relatively large fraction of rural-urban migrants crosses provincial boundaries. The perception that “the urban migrant is invariably a male” is incorrect; females make up a considerable proportion of migrants.

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