• Planning minister warns country could reach 370m by 2050, with annual addition of 4-4.5m people — equivalent to New Zealand’s population
• Population Council chief highlights need for better population management, notes nearly half of 12.7m pregnancies are ‘unwanted or mistimed’
• After leading both countries until 1990, Pakistan’s per capita income is now lagging behind neighbours
ISLAMABAD: Policymakers, experts, diplomats and lawmakers at the much-anticipated Pakistan Population Summit on December 1 expressed a unanimous view that prosperity was not possible if the number of mouths to feed kept rising.
In fact, they argued that without managing the population in terms of resources, all of the government’s efforts — aimed at development, progress and social uplift – would amount to naught.
They were of the view that Pakistan was clearly out of balance in terms of population growth and distribution of resources as compared to its neighbours.
The two-day Population Summit is being organised by Dawn Media.
In a special video message, Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal cited the estimated figure of 370 million people by 2050 and termed population growth a “defining challenge for the country’s future stability, prosperity and competitiveness”.
“Every single year, Pakistan adds almost the entire population of New Zealand, around 4-4.5 million people,” the minister added.
He said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had placed “stunting and population management at the highest national priority”, adding that the government is moving towards emergency multi-sector action integrating health, nutrition, education, social protection, water and local government systems.
Mr Iqbal said countries with high stunting lose 2-3 per cent of GDP annually. “Due to low productivity and impaired human capital, a stunted child earns up to 22 percent less over their lifetime.”
Balance and responsibility
Speaking on the occasion, the Population Council’s Country Director Dr Zeba Sattar said parents have the right to freely and responsibly decide the number and spacing of their children by maintaining a balance (Tawazun) between their family size and resources.
“The balance really is about responsibility, the state’s responsibility; the balance has to be restored in terms of societal issues, the balance between resources and the number of people in Pakistan,” she said, adding that Pakistan’s growth rate is double that of its neighbours. She said out of a total of 12.7m pregnancies recorded in Pakistan, six million were “unwanted or mistimed”. “If we had strong population management programmes, we could remove or rather reduce the unwanted pregnancies and focus on the other 6.7 million instead, ensuring a better mortality rate.”
Dr Sattar expressed confidence that Pakistani families would react positively to a well-funded population management programme.
“If we had strong population management programmes, we could remove or rather reduce the unwanted pregnancies and focus on the other 6.7 million instead, ensuring a better mortality rate.”
‘Human potential’
In her inaugural address, Dawn CEO Nazafreen Saigol-Lakhani said uncontrolled population growth put immense pressure on the country’s healthcare system, especially maternal and child health.
“It stretches our education system, leaving millions of children without access to quality learning. It increases the demand for jobs, housing, clean water, sanitation, transport and energy.”
She said the provision of education up to at least grade 12 and upskilling the youth through vocational training would not only strengthen Pakistan’s GDP but also position “our human capital to support other economies facing a population decline”.
Ms Saigol-Lakhani said Pakistan’s fast growth without parallel investment in human development made it harder to deliver basic services and harder for families to move out of poverty.
However, she said there was an opportunity for Pakistan, which was at a crossroads with a “large and growing population, a sizeable youth cohort and rapidly evolving socio-economic realities”.
‘Ticking time bombs’
Senator Sherry Rehman recalled how seven years ago, she wrote about three ticking time bombs for Pakistan — unchecked population growth was one of them, water scarcity and, of course, climate stress. “In my view, they are no longer ticking; they have noiselessly exploded around us.”
She said the federal government should have the information minister hold an awareness drive in the national language on population management measures.
Noting that the Contraception Prevalence Rate (CPR) was 34 percent, she emphasised that contraceptive usage would lower the birth rate and said there was a need for it to be easily and cheaply accessible. Ms Rehman said a woman in Pakistan would die every 50 minutes due to pregnancy or childbirth complications. The senator noted the Council of Islamic Ideology’s (CII) ruling allowing birth spacing, and said the hesitation was not a religious matter, but rather a cultural taboo.
“Population growth, in my view, and I am sure everyone agrees, has passed some kind of danger line,” she cautioned.
Comparisons Consortium for Development Policy Research’s Dr Hanid Mukhtar said Pakistan’s “capital-labour ratio is much, much lower than India’s”. He noted that Pakistan’s per capita income was 56pc higher than India’s in 1990 and almost double that of Bangladesh, but in 2024, India had 71pc higher GDP per capita than Pakistan and Bangladesh’s was 53pc higher. PML-N MNA Shaista Pervaiz also stressed that “population growth is no longer a demographic issue”.
“It is linked with our economy, it is linked with the well-being of our people, linked with the future of our children, linked with everything a country is judged by,” she said.
Ms Pervaiz noted that while there was “political will” present to address the issue, it was time that it should be “turned into action”.
Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2025.
