The Dynamics of Occupational Mobility and Household Well-Being in Rural Bangladesh

Abstract

Occupational mobility or moving up a career ladder are typically considered to be an welcome phenomenon for the workers. There are ample literatures on occupational mobility across generation in the context of developed countries but there only very limited studies exploring the dynamics of intergenerational occupational mobility in the context of developing countries, particularly in the context of Bangladesh because of limited sources of data on the subject. However, occupational choice of the households significantly affects household well-being in various ways. The occupation of the household significantly affects household income, food security, and child well-being of the households. This warrants a rigorous investigation into the dynamics of occupational mobility and its effect on household well-being in the developing countries like Bangladesh. This research, in this context, explores intergenerational occupational mobility in Bangladesh and its effect on household well-being. The empirical regression results show that occupational mobility and more specifically moving up in the occupational ladder enhances food security and child literacy, while occupational mobility also has significant effect in reducing child malnutrition in the survey area. Food security, child literacy and improvement in malnutrition are also positively affected by respondent’s occupational level, level of education, number of household members engaged in income generating activities, land owned by the respondents, NGO membership, benefits from social safety nets, and training in income generating activities. Our results, thus, offer important policy implication.