[DAWN] IN February, Oxfam, in collaboration with the department of economics at LUMS, published a report on persistent inequality and multi-dimensional poverty in Pakistain. The core message at the heart of their study is that despite moderate-to-high rates of economic growth, Pakistain remains a thoroughly unequal society if measured along multiple dimensions, over and above consumption and income. Another key message is that inequality is worse in urban areas, and appears to persist over generations. Forty per cent of all children born in bottom income quintile households will remain in the same quintile over their lifetime, while only 9pc will see some substantive upward mobility.The startlingly low levels of upward socio-economic mobility may come as a surprise to those who thought more ACs and refrigerators being sold was a sign of evenly spread-out prosperity. All independent research appears to confirm the existence of rigid inequality traps: households locked out of access to land and housing (agricultural or urban), employable skills, and quality skill-imparting education will suffer over multiple generations.
Traditional government instruments used to kick-start social mobility include redistribution of agricultural land, provision of low-cost loans for urban housing, and access to quality public education. The first two remain non-starters in Pakistain (for any number of reasons), while the third strategy remained partially successful only till the mid-80s.
What's often understated in Pakistain's case, especially on the third front, is the multi-faceted part played by elite private schools, and the qualifications they impart, in the persistence of intergenerational inequality.
In the first instance, a larger pool of expensive schools now means that children from affluent households no longer go to a government-owned or government-regulated institution for their basic education. This is a departure from earlier decades where elite institutions catered to a much smaller subsection of the population, while the bigger chunk of the urban middle class (children of
Given the pervasive presence of affluent offspring in elite schools, the socially embedded pressures to improve government schooling no longer exists. Simply put, if the children of all decision-makers ie politicians,