Background: Across the globe, lockdowns have been enforced as a pandemic response to COVID-19. Such lockdown coupled with school closures and stay-at-home orders made women more vulnerable in terms of higher responsibility and spending more time with an abusive partner, if any. Methods: This study investigates the situation of women during COVID-19 induced lockdown by focusing on their happiness and inquiring about the incidence of violence. Using the zero-inflated negative binomial model, our findings ascertained that family settings, type of relationship with a spouse, and age significantly affects the positive count of violence during the lockdown. We further estimated the determinants of happiness and found that years of schooling, the role of women in household decision making, and feeling empowered is affecting their happiness. Results: Women having higher education have more odds of zero violence. Unemployed women and women who are not working have higher odds of zero violence as compared to women who are working. During this lockdown after the COVID-19 pandemic, women living in urban areas, having higher education, having an adequate household income to meet the expenditures, having lesser anxiety, not facing violence, feeling empowered when their husband is around, and have higher decision-making power are happier. Discussion and conclusion: The study is important in the context of happiness and violence inflicted on women during the lockdown and provides the basis to improve the pandemic response policy. The inclusion of women’s safety and happiness in pandemic response policy is important to ensure the well-being of women and to devise better health and economic policy. Our estimates suggest higher education results in less incidence of violence which could be argued as desirable outcomes for building healthy, productive, and happy communities. In addition to this, as pandemic induced lock-down is likely to result in higher unemployment across the globe including Pakistan, therefore, in light of our estimates pertaining to the role of unemployment in the incidence of violence, policymakers should deploy more resources to enhance income and to combat the rising unemployment. As a counter-intuitive outcome of these policy interventions, incidence of violence will be dampened, educational attainment and women empowerment will be increased which will certainly increase happiness.

Stunting is an important issue as it leads to many adverse consequences on children’s health. Pakistan is in public health crisis due to higher stunting rates in children. World Health Organization entails the prevalence of stunting to be less than 2.5% in a healthy population, but every third child is stunted in Punjab (largest province of Pakistan by area and population). By using the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) Punjab, 2018 and employing multilevel logistic regression analyses, this study finds that children whose mothers are educated and have better access to drinking water and antenatal care have lower odds of stunting. Access to better and accessible health care, education especially of girls/women, and clean water can reduce stunting in children. The government needs to give special attention to these factors to help children grow healthy.

There is a need to identify household debt behaviour in different age cohorts even in countries without prominent household debt problems so that the measures for vulnerable groups can be made. Authors used multilevel mixed effect analysis to test the effect of age and other variables on demand of debt. A national representative survey data of HIES (2001–2013) based on stratified sampling design was used. Household debt in mature workers was higher than youth whereas debt of older people was not significantly different from other cohorts. Education and household size positively affect the demand for debt. This study contributed to existing literature by exploring the demand for debt in different age cohorts, taking into account other socio-economic variables. The design of debt products should be such that mature workers should not accumulate a high level of debt.

To achieve the sustainable development goal of “no poverty”, many attempts have been made to measure poverty so that policy intervention can target the right people with the correct intensity. Since the traditional method of a unidimensional approach using monetary indicators, such as income and consumption, is now considered insufficient, a multidimensional approach has been employed using non-monetary indicators. The latter approach encompasses the different poverty aspects affecting an individual’s capabilities and functioning. This study aimed to calculate multidimensional poverty in Pakistan using the Alkire & Foster method and Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics data for 2018–19. To further complete the research, a binary logistic regression has been run to measure the effects of a deviation in income status on multidimensional poverty to see the impact of monetary income on non-monetary measures. Results show that the national global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is 0.24, meaning that multidimensionally poor people in Pakistan experience 24% of the total deprivations. The most deprived dimension of the three is education (44.7%), which needs special attention. Furthermore, if a household’s total annual income increases and becomes more significant than the mean income of the sample, the household’s probability of being multidimensionally poor will decrease. This implies that with the increase in average national income, the national poverty will reduce not only in absolute terms but also multidimensionally. This study’s findings have several implications for policymakers, and the results of the MPI should align the allocation of public sector resources calculated to give a geographical and sectoral image of the poverty situation, which will guide policy designs and allocation of budget and resources.

We studied the effects of birth order and socioeconomic factors on educational attainment in Pakistan. We examined this relationship by using PSLM/HIES 2018–19 which is nationally representative household survey data. We found striking evidence that being born first as a male child is positively and significantly associated with educational attainment. Whereas in our girls' sample we found that being born first is significantly and negatively associated with educational attainment, and this effect does not persist for second-born female children if the firstborn is a male child. Such a difference in our estimates led us to investigate further the cohort and rural–urban dimensions. We concluded that urban areas in Pakistan are primarily responsible for resource rationing in favor of male children for younger cohorts. Therefore, the study recommends the targeted policy intervention to remove such differentials based on gender when it comes to the educational attainment of a child.