**<u>Table 2: Intergenerational Mobility in Occupations</u>**

|Father's occupation|Farmers (self<br>empl. and wage)|Son/Dau<br>Off farm wage<br>(low skill)|ghter's Occupation<br>Off farm wage<br>(medium/high<br>skill)|Off farm self-<br>employment|_N_|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Farmers (self empl. and wage)|48%|20%|4%|27%|2,761|
|Off farm wage (low skill)|26%|29%|6%|38%|591|
|Off farm self-employment|16%|17%|6%|62%|518|
|Off farm wage (medium/high skill)|10%|16%|28%|47%|122|
|_N_|1,590|839|223|1,340|3,992|

_Note:_ Rows add up to 100%. _Source_ : World Bank Staff estimates based on data from Perceptions of Poverty, Prosperity and Economic Mobility in Nepal, 2014.

Moving on to occupation, we categorize occupations into four main categories: (a) farming that includes wage work or self-employment in agriculture; (b) off-farm wage work that is of low skill content (such as in construction, porterage, helpers in hotels and restaurants, etc.); (c) off farm wage work that is medium to high skill and comes closer in the context of Nepal to white collared, salaried employment, and; (d) offfarm self-employment which can be anything from a small mom-and-pop all-purpose grocery store in rural areas to proprietorship of small and medium enterprises or anything bigger than that. The survey allows the matching of about 4,000 father-son pairs for whom information on these occupations is recorded. This information is presented in Table 2 and as before, the occupations of fathers are reported along rows while those of off-springs, along columns.

Looking at just the overall occupational composition, it is clear to see that there has been a dramatic shift away from farm and farming related occupations in Nepal. Whereas about 69 percent of fathers in the earlier generation were in some form of agricultural employment, only about 40 percent of sons/daughters ended up in this category. This is consistent with the pattern of structural transformation observed in Nepal over the last quarter century with a gradual decline in agriculture’s share of overall GDP as well as employment. Consequently, employment shares of low skilled off farm wage work, and off farm self-employment increased from 15 percent to 21 percent and 13 percent to 33 percent respectively. Regular or salaried employment roughly doubled from about 3 percent of the total in the father’s generation to 5.6 percent for children’s.

Within the same father-son pair as well, the results in Table 2 show substantial occupational reshuffling. About 48 percent of those whose fathers were farmers, have remained farmers, others have moved on to other occupations – 20 percent in low skilled jobs, 27 percent in some form of self-employment and 4 percent in white collar jobs. The highest occupational “persistence” as given by the size of the diagonal elements in each of occupational categories appears to be in off-farm self-employment: 62 percent of those whose fathers were in self-employment outside of agriculture remain in that same occupation. One caveat is in order here. Given the manner in which the question about occupations was asked in the survey, for the respondents we have information on their occupation in the year preceding the survey while for their fathers the information we have is on what they did for the majority of their life. Depending on age and the stage of their life cycle each of the respondent is in, the mobility figures implied by the numbers reported here may be underestimates because it is well known from other settings and also from Nepal that individuals are more likely to start out in the occupation of their parents or in jobs with generally lower economic and social returns and gradually branch out and move on as they get more experienced.

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