Urban Transition in Pakistan

Urbanization is not a new story in Pakistan. Six to eight million Muslims crossed the new border and entered into Pakistan during partition in 1947 and majority of them settled in the cities of eastern Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab. The second big migration flow towards cities occurred in 1965 and 1971 during the wars between India and Pakistan. In the 1990s, the anti-soviet insurgency resulted into further migration to the urban centers. Four million Afghans crossed Durand line (border between Pakistan and Afghanistan) and arrived in the North-Western Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtwankhawa) in 1992. In the beginning, they resided in the border refugee camps, Pakistan government forbade Afghans to cultivate land due to already existing economic struggle in these rural areas and the consequence was that they settled in the city of Peshawar and Quetta (Kugelman, 2013). After 9/11 incidence in 2001, Pakistan emerged as a front line state in war against terrorism.

Demographic Transition in Pakistan

It is often said that Islam is the fastest- growing religion in the world. This statement is true because of the pace of demographic transition in the Muslim-majority countries relative to the rest of world. Middle east and North Africa (MENA) region, the largest concentration of Muslim population (Above 90%), experienced rapid mortality decline during the second half of the 20^th century whereas fertility rate remained high and population growth reached to its peak of 3.0 % per year in 1980’s but at the same time the growth rate for the world reached its peak of 2.0 % annual growth rate more than a decade earlier. Iran, Lebanon, Tunisia and Turkey have completed their demographic transition and their total fertility rate (TFR)  reached below 2.1 (replacement level) but at the same time their population is continued to increase in the coming decades due to young age structure owing to high fertility in the past. The speed of population growth will be faster in countries that are in the early or middle stages of demographic transition. TFR of Pakistan (3.6) is the second highest after Nigeria (TFR=5.9) in the top ten largest Muslim populations. It is difficult to predict the pace of demographic transition of a country and Iran surprised the world through dropping its TFR from 5.6 in 1985 to 2.0 in 2000- the fastest decline in the world (Fahimi, May et al. 2013 ).Pakistan is lagging in successful completion of demographic transition due to the influence of religion, male dominated society and family system.  (Mahmood 2014)

Pakistan has a unique position in the demographic transition. Pakistan has passed rapidly the first stage of the demographic transition with the transfer of advanced medical facilities from the advanced countries whereas Pakistan is lagging in passing through the second stage of demographic transition and is still in the early phase of second stage in which birth rate begins to decline.