Spatial Disparities in Human Development Index across the Districts of Pakistan: An ESDA Analysis

Pakistan is spatially a diverse state in terms of the location of its economic activities, and regional disparities in human development level have been a vital concern in its history. The article aims to analyze the distribution of the development index across 97 districts of Pakistan through exploratory spatial data analysis for periods 2004-05 and 2014-15. For this purpose, an augmented development index is constructed for measuring development levels across districts. The index consists of three sub-indexes of education, health, and household welfare level, with each index further consisting of five indicators. The findings of the study indicate positive global autocorrelation, thus indicating that a district with a high (low) is linked spatially with bordering districts that also have a high (low) Development level. The results also display the HH quadrant in the scatterplot of the development Index, which includes most districts of Punjab and KP, while LL illustrates a cluster of most districts from Interior Sindh and Balochistan for both the 2004-05 and 2014-15 periods. Overall, the findings demonstrate the twofold structure of Pakistan’s economic geography, as explained by most of the previous studies. Since the geography of development matters, it is recommended to reduce inequalities across districts by developing the social and economic institutions and infrastructure in Balochistan and Interior Sindh.