Report

Zakat payments in Pakistan exceed state social protection

This report from UK think tank the Institute of Development Studies looks at how much zakat we can estimate is being paid in Pakistan every year – and where the money is going.

Every year, hundreds of millions of Muslims across the world pay a proportion of their wealth as zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam mandating an annual payment of a proportion of an individual’s productive wealth, broadly representing 2.5 per cent. Consequently, zakat represents a significant part of how redistribution and social protection works in practice. And yet there have been almost no empirically robust estimates of its quantum and effect.

Since 2021, a partnership between the ICTD and the Lahore University of Management Sciences has enabled more systematic accounts of how zakat is paid in practice, including through a new nationally representative survey of 7,500 Sunni Pakistanis conducted via computer-assisted telephone interviews in 2024.

Using this novel data, this factsheet explains how much zakat we can estimate is being paid in Pakistan every year – and where the money is going.