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Good practice Imported

Pakistan BISP — National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) Algorithmic Social Protection Targeting

Pakistan · Islamabad · See the Pakistan profile · See the Islamabad profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 35% 67/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Pakistan's BISP operates a 35-million-household registry using Proxy Means Test scoring cross-referenced with NADRA biometric data to identify the poor; 15 million families receive transfers and 820,000 ineligibles were removed after the 2019–2021 national data update.

over 35 million households
Households covered by NSER
more than 85%
Share of Pakistan's total households covered
0-100
Welfare score (Proxy Means Test) range
8,500 rupees
Kafalat quarterly cash transfer amount
2019 to 2021
Major data collection cycle
approximately 820,000
Women removed after failing updated eligibility checks
15 million families
Families reached after outreach expansion
34 million households in 24 months
Total digital survey coverage
$603 million
ADB support commitment (2020)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP)
Period
2019–ongoing
Keywords
social protection, poverty targeting, proxy means test, biometric registry, welfare

Context

Pakistan's Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) operates the National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER), a large-scale household database built through door-to-door surveys covering over 35 million households, more than 85% of Pakistan's total.

Objectives

To generate a welfare score for each household via a Proxy Means Test algorithm using dwelling quality, asset ownership, demographic composition, and adult employment and education levels, to target Kafalat quarterly cash transfers to households below an eligibility threshold.

Activities

A major data collection cycle ran 2019-2021, correcting coverage gaps from the original 2011 survey. Records are cross-referenced with the NADRA biometric identity system via a Cognitive API integration to match household members to biometric IDs and expose registration inconsistencies. Since 2022, Dynamic Registration Centres in every tehsil allow continuous self-registration and updates.

Results

Cross-matching with NADRA revealed inclusion errors: approximately 820,000 women who failed updated eligibility checks were removed from the programme. Outreach simultaneously expanded coverage to 15 million families, tripling beneficiary households from pre-reform levels, while the total digital survey covered 34 million households in 24 months. The Asian Development Bank committed $603 million in 2020 to support Ehsaas (merged with BISP in 2022). World Bank assessments have identified remaining exclusion errors among extremely poor households not reached by the initial survey.

Conclusions

The Lancet cited the programme as a model for advancing universal social protection in a fragmented system; its distinctive contribution is scale — the largest biometrically cross-referenced social registry in South Asia — and a dynamic, self-updating architecture beyond one-time surveys.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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