National poverty rate fell from 64.3% in 2001-02 to 21.9% in 2018-19.
Source
World Bank — https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2025/09/22/pakistan-bold-sustained-people-centered-reforms-needed-to-reduce-poverty-build-resilience-and-protect-vulnerable-populat. Verified in source set / retroactive normalization pending.
What it proves
Large-scale poverty reduction is possible; avoid portraying poverty as permanently worsening.
What it does not prove: The series ends at 2018-19 and is measured against the national poverty line, so it captures nothing of COVID, the inflation surge, the 2022 floods or the macro crisis; by 2023-24 the World Bank put about 60.4m Pakistanis below that line. A falling rate also masks the absolute count, since population grew throughout the same period.
Memory hook: 64.3%→21.9% → poverty cut by two-thirds, but the series stops at 2018-19
Rebuts the claim: "Poverty in Pakistan has only ever deepened and no policy has ever moved it" — the 2001-02 to 2018-19 record shows large-scale reduction did happen.