Concurring with other studies on poverty that there had been a substantial downward shift in the incidence of poverty throughout the 1970s and 1980s, this paper examines trends in the changed macroeconomic environment in the post-1991 period to explain the possible reasons why poverty may have returned to Pakistan in the 1990s. Using a consumption based approach to poverty, the authors use a basic needs, rather than a food based poverty line and present an analysis at the aggregated level, not taking account of regional differentiation. They examine the determinants of poverty reduction in Pakistan and look at:per capita growth in income and poverty, the impact of remittances, the role of safety nets, and the impact of fiscal policy. In the past. the authors attribute respectable rates of economic growth for levering poverty; for the period 1990-95, however, their results show that aggregate growth has declined, where most labour intensive sectors, such as construction, transport and communications, agriculture, wholesale and retail trade, all show lower growth. There is also a slowing down in the growth of manufacturing, and a sharp fall in real wages in the period 1991-95. The high trends of remittances in the eighties, when they were at times 9.3 percent of (;DP, have slowed to an average of 3.5 percent of GDP in the period 1991-95, affecting growth and its positive poverty alleviation and distributional impact. The collection of zakat and ushr has increased substantially in the 1990s, but because of its religious connotations -- only muslims and that too, mustahiqeen, are entitled -- the authors do not consider this to be an effective safety net as the contribution from these sources targets a very small proportion of the poor and targeting is also believed to be poor. The sharp reductions in government food subsidies in the 1990x, is believed to have negative effects on the status of the poverty of the poor. The only positive trend in the 1990x, seems to be the continued expenditure to the social sectors, which has not been cut despite overall government expenditure reduction. The overall conclusions of the authors are that since economic growth and fortuitous exogenous factors, rather than active public policy, helped reduce poverty in previous decades, a deterioration in these positive factors may have resulted in the return of poverty to Pakistan in the 1990s