I argue that the World Bank finding that Pakistan accounts for about 48 per cent of the extreme poor in the MENAAP region should not be read as a verdict on Pakistan’s entire development record.
October 26, 2026
Are Pakistan’s richest children really stunted?
November 2, 2026How often does a first marriage end? We at Gallup Pakistan Digital Analytics tried to get a rough sense from household surveys, and the honest answer is that surveys can only give us a range.
Looking at ever-married women aged 15–49 in Punjab (MICS 2024), Pakistan overall (PDHS 2017-18) and India (NFHS-5), we found that roughly 1.5–2.2% are divorced or separated at the time of the survey. If we also count women who have remarried, the figure rises to about 3–5.5%.
A few patterns we noticed, which we’d treat as tentative:
• Richer households tend to report fewer ended first marriages, in all three surveys.
• Most endings seem to show up in the first 5 to 10 years of marriage.
• In Punjab, women who married before 15 stand out (about 10% on the higher measure), though the numbers are small.
What these figures can’t tell us:
• They are a snapshot, not a lifetime divorce rate.
• They miss women who divorced and remarried, and women who moved back home but still say they are married.
• The surveys differ in year and question wording, so differences between Punjab, Pakistan
and India may partly reflect how each survey asks.
• These are associations, not causes.
We’d welcome corrections, especially from colleagues who work with marriage-history data or have looked at this before.