BREAKING CHAINS: UNRAVELING THE NEXUS OF POVERTY, TERRORISM, AND ECONOMIC DYNAMICS FOR A RESILIENT FUTURE

Abstract

            For Pakistan, poverty is a persistent phenomenon as nearly 70% of the population is poor here. The four provinces of Pakistan; Sindh, Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), and Punjab have diverse and unique characteristics. The purpose of the study is how poverty and economic inequalities are responsible for terrorism in different regions of Pakistan. Data was collected from four provinces of Pakistan, over the period 2001-2020. The data sources for the selected variables are the Planning & Development Commission of Pakistan, the labor force survey, and PSLM survey of the Federal Bureau of Statistics, and the Global terrorism database. The study employed the Cointegration analysis after checking the stationarity of the data.  Finally, after determining the long-run relationship among the variables, we have used the between-group method of fully modified OLS (FMOLS).  The overall findings reveal that any injuries, caused by terrorism incidents are not affected by multidimensional poverty (an index showing the deprivation of education, health, and housing).  However, it is always considered that poverty and terrorism are closely interconnected. The findings from our study showed that poverty is not the reason behind terrorist activities. Our research findings indicate that the number of people killed, and injured through terrorist suicide attacks remains unaffected by the CPI.  The overall impact of unemployment whether literate or illiterate harms injuries, killed by terrorist incidents.  The research findings of our study also reflect the support of the population towards terrorist activities but this support starts diminishing with the participation of social protection. In Pakistan, the role of social protection policies seems negligible in controlling terrorist activities. In contrast, counteracting welfare policies increases the tendency of terrorism.