Assessing the Impact of Educational Status on Poverty Alleviation in Khyber Paktunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract

The core purpose of this study was to assess the impact of educational status on
poverty alleviation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The major hypothesis developed for this
study was that higher literacy rate among people had greater potentials to combat
poverty. The nature of the respondents was male both literate and illiterate falling in
the age group of (18-60) years and above from the slum areas of four randomly
selected districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa namely Mardan, Kohat, Haripur and
Chitral respectively. A sample size of 800 respondents was drawn out from the
target population. Interview schedule, designed on Likert Scale was used as tool and
interview as method for data collection. Chi-square test was used to measure the
association between two variables i.e. dependent variable (Poverty Alleviation) and
independent variable (Educational Status). A relationship was measured among
occupation (P = 0.000), monthly income (P = 0.000), per capita income of the
educated respondents (P = 0.000), per capita income of the illiterate respondents (P
= 0.000), house condition(P = 0.000), possession of property(P = 0.000), type of
property (P = 0.000), size of land(P = 0.000), affordability of medicines (P = 0.000),
specialist doctor and hospitalization (P = 0.000) with educational status. Free
education, investment in education and improvement of existing formal education
system were forwarded as recommendations in light of the study.