Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in India

In this paper, we examine the intergenerational occupational mobility in India among men born during 1945-85. Following Long and Ferrie (2013, American Economic Review), we not only distinguish between prevalence and association, but also use the Altham Statistics – which involves comparison of all possible odds ratios, for example, the odds that the son of a white collar father would get a white collar job compared with the odds that the son of a low-skilled father would get a white collar job – as measure of distance between son-father occupation associations across cohorts. We extend the analysis to the differences in mobility across social groups, and attempt to isolate the specific odds ratios that account for the largest part of the difference. We find no evidence of difference in mobility in successive ten year birth cohorts; however, looking at the longer time period (birth cohort 1945-54 vs. 1975-84), we find that the mobility in the 1975-84 birth cohort is higher than the mobility in the 1945-54 birth cohort. Although the mobility among Scheduled Castes/Tribes (SC/STs) in the 1945-64 birth cohort was not different than the mobility observed in the entire 1945-64 birth cohort, SC/STs born during 1965-84 experienced a higher mobility when compared with the entire 1965-84 birth cohort. Similarly, when compared with the higher castes, SC/STs experienced lower mobility in the 1945-64 birth cohort; however, the mobility among SC/STs has been higher than the mobility among higher castes in the 1965-84 birth cohort.