ABSTRACT
PIP: This article studies how people become upwardly mobile, or the factors involved in this process, in Pakistan. It explains the income and wealth positions of Pakistanis from different generations in terms of their endowments of social, human, and physical capital and other socioeconomic characteristics. 1200 respondents from 10 major city districts were interviewed in 1982. The analysis of correlations between the absolute level of income and wealth vis-a-vis the fathers' and sons' characteristics has shown that the improvement in the economic position of sons follows a more stable and coherent pattern than the improvement in fathers' economic position. The analysis of the magnitudes of mobility indicators shows that the dispersion of accumulated wealth is considerably higher than that of income among individual sons. The analysis of correlations between the wealth and the income indicators vis-a-vis fathers' and sons' characteristics shows that fathers' labor characteristics, in particular--their occupations, work status, and education--provide significant and coherent patterns for improvement of economic positions of sons. Wealth mobility by places of origin and residence is sensitive to influx of migrants' fathers for India. The analysis of incidences of upward wealth and income mobility by working status and occupations has shown that the results are sensitive to the transition process between fathers and sons in the labor market, from non-wage to wage employment, and from low paying and less skilled jobs to more skilled and better paying ones.^ieng
