Are Pakistanis Eating Less to Afford Electricity and Gas?

A 20-year comparison of Pakistan’s household consumption shares (2005 → 2025) reveals a structural shift with serious implications for welfare and policy.

The most worrying change is food. Its share of household spending has fallen from 43% to 37%. This is not because food became cheaper or less important. When combined with falling food quantities and weaker real incomes, this decline likely reflects households cutting back on consumption—a pattern that can fuel undernourishment, especially among children and women.

At the same time, housing and utilities have surged from 15% to 25% of household budgets—the single largest increase across all categories. This rise is driven largely by electricity and gas bills, rents, and related charges, which are increasingly shaped by taxes, administered prices, and subsidy withdrawals rather than household choice.
In other words, households are reallocating spending away from food to pay fixed, policy-driven costs.

Transport and communication also edged up, reflecting fuel prices and the growing necessity of connectivity. Meanwhile, education, health, and recreation remain flat, suggesting that rising fixed costs are crowding out human-capital and quality-of-life spending.

The implication is clear:

Pakistan’s cost-of-living challenge is no longer just about income growth. It is about how public pricing, taxation, and subsidy decisions reshape household budgets—often in ways that squeeze nutrition first.

Source is HIES from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics .