Pakistan’s “Sandwich Class” Is Disappearing: Poverty Back At 28.9% After Falling To 21.9% In 2018-19. Gini Coefficient Widened From 28.4 To 32.7. Electricity Tariffs More Than Doubled Since 2021. Public Debt Rs83.285 Trillion With Rs4.947 Trillion Interest In Nine Months
According to Pakistan Today, Dr Zafar Khan Safdar argues that Pakistan’s middle class; the “sandwich class” squeezed between the wealthy and the very poor, is vanishing under a tax burden that has grown far faster than incomes, electricity tariffs that more than doubled since 2021, and a public debt mountain whose interest payments consume resources that could have cushioned them.
The data is stark. Gross salaries rose 56 per cent between 2022 and 2025. Income tax collected from salaried workers rose 165 per cent. Poverty climbed back to 28.9 per cent after falling to 21.9 per cent in 2018-19. Rural poverty stands at 36.2 per cent. The Gini coefficient widened from 28.4 to 32.7. Total public debt reached Rs83.285 trillion by March 2026, with interest payments alone consuming Rs4.947 trillion in just the first nine months.
In 1990, Pakistan had the largest middle class as a proportion of population among Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Today it has the smallest; a reversal produced by policies that extract relentlessly from the documented and salaried while leaving the undocumented economy, the landed elite and the politically connected comparatively insulated.
“The middle class exists merely to pay the difference,” Safdar writes. “It finances the state, buys privately the services the government fails to provide, and absorbs every new tax, tariff, and price increase with little expectation of relief.”
The wealthy negotiate exemptions. The poor have nothing to take. The middle class pays, until it can no longer.
Check out our previous coverage of Pakistan’s economy on The Trusted Times.
