Pakistan’s Deep Divide: Structural Inequality Traps Millions While Elites Thrive |
By any honest measure, Pakistan is not merely unequal; it is a country sharply divided, operating under parallel economic orders. The growing distance between wealth and deprivation is not the outcome of misfortune or passing economic mismanagement. It flows from conscious decisions made, repeated and justified over decades.
According to the World Inequality Report 2026, the top 10 per cent of earners in Pakistan appropriate roughly 42 per cent of total national income, while the bottom half, more than 120 million people, are left to divide just 19 per cent. Wealth is even more tightly concentrated. The richest 10 per cent control nearly 59 per cent of all assets, with the top 1 per cent alone owning close to a quarter. These are not distant figures confined to technical reports. They explain why millions of households exist one illness, one school fee, one fuel-price shock away from ruin while a narrow elite stockpiles assets, political leverage and effective immunity from crisis.
What makes this divide particularly damning is its permanence. Inequality in Pakistan has barely shifted over the past decade. This is not equilibrium; it is consolidation. When inequality endures through both growth and contraction, it reveals a system working exactly as intended. World Bank estimates suggest that anywhere from one-quarter to two-fifths of Pakistanis are living in poverty, depending on the measurement.
In real terms, this produces endurance rather than aspiration. Inflation does not merely thin savings; it eliminates meals. A health emergency does not disrupt life; it traps families in cycles of debt that can last generations. A failed........