Public defense spending and poverty in Pakistan

Abstract

The principal attribute of this paper is to address the question that whether public defense spending is pro-poverty or anti-poverty in Pakistan? The empirical findings show that public spending on defense is increasing poverty in Pakistan and results are robust to various controls. This study proposes that government could allocate its resources more towards social sector development from defense expenditures on the one side and on the other side it could initiate a serious move towards the peace pacts with India for the sake of the betterment of people of the country.