The paper has used eleven indicators relating to the education, health and water supply sectors to rank districts of Pakistan in terms of the level of social development. It also seeks to explain regional variation in the development of social infrastructure across districts. The paper demonstrates the importance of education indicators in determining the overall level of social development, especially in terms of female literacy and enrolment rates. Also, the ranking demonstrate a close correlation between levels of social and economic development spatially with Pakistan. Other important determinants of regional variations in the level of social development include the extent of urbanisation, the administrative development of the district (location of provincial headquarters), and the geographical/economic significance (indicated by the presence of the sea port). Overall, Punjab appears to have the highest level of social development followed by NWFP, Sindh and Balochistan. However, the results indicate substantial variation among districts within a province in the level of social development. Least developed districts within each province are identified as targets for special development allocations within SAP.

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Sum m ary. The paper has applied a con vention al fram ework of analysis of im plicit markets to determ ine the charac teristics of dem and for housing attrib utes of quantity and quality in the urban areas of a large, low -incom e develop ing cou ntry like Pakistan . Incom e elasticit ies gen erally appear to be low , alth ough som ew hat higher for indicators of quality. O wn-price elasticit ies are high while the cross-p rice effects with resp ect to different attrib ute prices reveal the high degree of substitu tibility am ong these attrib utes. M ethodological innovation s in the paper include the use of a weigh ted factor score for the m easurem ent of housing quality and incorp oration of the effect of changes in non-housing prices on dem and for housing attrib utes. G iven the large m agn itude of own-price effects and the negative im pact of a rise in non-housing prices, it appears that in the face of slow grow th in real incom es and double-d igit in¯ation in Pakistan resid ential overcro w ding con dition s are likely to w orsen over time.

This paper analyses the characteristics of housing demand in the formal and informal housing markets of a large metropolitan city (Karachi) in a developing country (Pakistan) with low per capita incomes. While results of earlier research are confirmed in the case of the formal housing market, the explanatory power of the conventional housing demand specification is very limited in the informal sector. This is attributed to the impact of outward remittances by migrants, imperfections in the housing credit market, the low level of provision of public goods and differences in housing preferences.