Ninth Annual Conference on Management of the Pakistan Economy Human Capital Development for Sustained Economic Growth/ Inequality, Institutions and Intergenerational Educational Mobility: Dynamics of Change in Rural Punjab

Abstract

We analyse educational attainment over three generations in rural Punjab, Pakistan to determine if the fruits of post-independence development have translated into comparable rates of educational and social opportunities for all strata in the village economy. We show that differences in class status institutionalized at the time of colonial village settlement lead to a sustained divergence in the rate of intergenerational educational mobility, with limited mobility for non-proprietary and marginalized groups compared to proprietary groups. The inter-class differences in the rate of mobility are higher in proprietary landed estates where the colonial state concentrated land rights and governance in the hands of landlords compared to crown estates that had a more egalitarian arrangement of land rights and governance. We find that the divergence in inter-class mobility is worrying, so much so that the current generation of marginalized households appears to have fallen a generation behind in terms of educational attainment even though it physically resides in the same villages as the proprietary households.