Intergenerational Mobility in Educational and Occupational Status: Evidence from Households of Pakistan

Abstract

Persistence in socio-economic status causes inequalities in opportunities. In such a society poor not only remain underdeveloped but their talent and skills are also wasted or misallocated. As a result, both parental as well as children generations experience backwardness. On the other hand, in a highly mobile society, poor and rich have equal chances of success and failure. Their incentives to work hard increase which lead to enhance innovations and economic growth. This study uses level of education and occupation, non-monetary measures, as proxies for socio-economic status and investigates their mobility across the generations in Pakistan. We utilize data set, the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurements (PSLM-2012-13) for our analysis. In first step of our analysis, we examine educational and occupational structure and explore that majority of the fathers and sons are uneducated or less educated and are engaged in lower status occupations in all the regions throughout the country. In the second step of our analysis, we use both transition matrices and multinomial logit model to find out the strength of mobility in educational and occupational status. Our results indicate strong linkages between educational/occupational status of fathers and their sons. Chances for the sons of less educated fathers are very limited to attain high levels of education relative to the sons of high educated fathers. We also find negative impacts of family size on attainments of high levels of education. Results also show a strong persistence in occupational status. This persistence is stronger in the higher status occupations in urban regions while persistence is stronger in the lower status occupations in rural regions. Opportunities are not equal for rich and poor as there are limited chances for the sons whose fathers are in lower status occupations to move to the higher status occupations as compared to those whose fathers are in high status occupations. Moreover, while sons of “Clerks” are more mobile towards higher status occupations in urban regions, they are more mobile towards the lower status occupations in the rural regions. Similarly, more downward mobility is observed for the sons of “Technicians and Associate Professionals” and “Professionals” in the rural regions. Increase in human capital, experience in the job market, income and wealth are found to be important determinants of occupational status of a son.