Suchergebnisse

The paper addresses the problems of the reintegration of
return migrants in the context of major South Asian and South East Asian
labour exporting countries to the Middle East. The discussion that
follows briefly analyses the changing trends in outmigration, the
socioeconomic characteristics of return migrants to the region -their
skills, occupations, job preferences, region of residence, as well as
the macro-level employment situation in the concerned countries. Further
the study investigates to what extent the return migration is associated
with skill acquisition or upgrading of skills and the pattern of
utilisation by the returnees of the accumulated savings including both
remittance income and the amount they bring back. The discussion is
largely based on evidence provided in surveys of return migrants
mostIyundertaken in the mid eighties when due to the collapse of oil
prices and the subsequem cuts in the development programme of the Middle
Eastern ecOD

The origins of the informal sector are traced to the twin
problems of rapid urbanization, as a result of rural to urban migration,
and low rates of employment expansion in the "modem" sector. The
inability of the "modern" sector to provide jobs for the fast growing
urban labour force, however, is not' reflected in widespread
unemployment. Instead, the surplus labour is absorbed in other sections
of the urban economy which has been termed in the development literature
as the informal sector. The informal sector not only serves the
important function of absorbing surplus labour unable to find jobs in
the modern organized sector but it is also the training ground for
workers in the economy. According to the Sixth Plan document, of the
estimated 50,000 skilled workers produced annually only ten percent go
through formal training institutions (Government of Pakistan 1983).

The paper estimates intersectoral terms of trade for the
period from 1970-71 to 1981-82. On the basis of these results the study
further analyses the relationship between terms of trade and aggregate
farm output over the period. The findings indicate some improvement in
agriculture's terms of trade over the Seventies. However, no conclusive
support is provided to the hypothesis of high supply responsiveness of
aggregate farm output to shifts in the relative price ratio of sectoral
output.

The study has two objectives: to evaluate existing empirical
work on the subject of sectoral tax burdens, and to present alternative
estimates of relative tax capacity and tax burden for the farm and
non-farm sectors during the Seventies. The result, indicate that whereas
the agricultural sector as a whole was overtaxed compared to the
non-agriculture sector, the higher income groups in the farm sector were
substantially undertaxed as compared to their urban counterparts. This
fact reflects the extreme repressiveness of the agrarian tax structure
in the absence of an effective direct tax on agricultural
income.

Gender systems depict several dimensions of the relations
between men and women across different social settings. Mason (1995) has
described the complexity of gender systems that encompass concepts such
as women's standing, empowerment, the sexual division of spheres and the
rather widely used concept of women's status. Gender systems in Pakistan
are posited to be unequal in favour of men, because of strong
patriarchal systems, which ordain that men and older persons make all
major decisions. As a result, women's status is argued to be low in most
dimensions: poor educational attainment, few economic opportunities
apart from family based employment which is largely unpaid and the
virtual seclusion of women from the public spheres of life especially
those involving financial transactions. Spheres of life are quite
separate with men having the primary responsibility of breadwinning and
women to be primarily responsible for within household routine chores
such as those involving cleaning, cooking, animal care and child
care.

Although still 'invisible' to policy-makers, women's
involvement in agricultural and livestock production is empirically
established through national surveys and intensive studies. The labour
force participation rates for rural women in 1990-91 varied ranged
between 57 percent (Agricultural Census) and 43 percent (Pakistan
Integrated Household Survey). Evidence from micro studies also shows
that women are active participants in the farm and livestock sectors
[Freedman and Wai (1988); Masood (1988); Ali et al. (1976); Haque
(1986); Khan and Bilquees (1976)]. While rural women's contribution to
agricultural and livestock production is well-documented, they have
little or no access to productive inputs to enhance their economic
participation in these sectors. Evidence based on national level data
indicates that women's participation in agricultural activities is
constrained by the lack of land and other assets [Sathar and Desai
(1994)]. Contrary to the general view, women belonging to households
that own land or other assets have a higher labour force participation
rate than landless women. While landless women are more likely to work
as agricultural labourers, however, the demand for wage employment is
seasonal, limited to a few activities and certain regions, and their
lack of assets to work with excludes any possibility of self-employment.
Findings of village level research indicate a wide gap between the
technology used by rural women and the more efficient practices in
livestock production, which is attributed to their lack of contact with
extension services and to their lack of resources to adopt more
efficient methods of livestock care [Haque (1986)].

Female employment is considered an important means of lowering
fertility through ways such as raising the age at marriage, through
influencing desired family size and also through better knowledge and
use of contraceptives. Increasing female labour force participation is
frequently recommended as a critical policy measure for reducing the
birth rate. However the significant inverse relationship between
employment and fertility found for developed countries is weak or absent
in the case of developing countries [Rodriguez and Cleland (1980)]. More
recent evidence indicates that it is not so much employment per se but
type of employment which is a critical determinant of reproductive
behaviour [United Nations (1985)]. It has been shown that while high
status professional jobs are associated with greater influence on
women's domestic autonomy and fertility, low paying jobs lead to an
increasing burden of work with entirely different implications for
fertility and other household related behaviour. In the context of
Pakistan, despite two decades of industrial growth and development,
official data sources show stagnant and low levels of female labour
force participation rates (LFPR) in urban Pakistan. The LFPR for urban
women ranged between 3 and 5 percent for the period between 1971 and
1988. Data collection methods of government agencies are known to
greatly underestimate female labour force participation (FLFP)
particularly in rural areas and in the urban informal sector where the
distinction between productive and domestic activities tends to be
ambivalent. Evidence from micro surveys indicates, on the contrary, an
increasing influx of women in the urban labour market, particularly in
the informal sector [Sathar and Kazi (1988); Shaheed and Mumtaz (1981);
Bilquees and Hamid (1989)]. A large number are shown to be working in
home-based piece-rate employment while domestic service mainly as
sweepers, washerwomen, maids,
etc.................................

Before proceeding to the main fmdings of the study it is
necessary to briefly mention the problems of data collection on women's
employment in Pakistan. The shortcomings of official data sources such
as the Labour Force Survey and the Population Census have been pointed
out in detail elsewhere [Afzal and Nasir (1987); Government of Pakistan
(1986)] here it will suffice to state that women's economic
participation is greatly underestimated in official statistics mainly
due to unsuitable methods of data collection, inappropriate definitions
of activities and stress on recording only one activity, and the
cultural inhibition to admitting to women working. Given these problems
the present study relies primarily on data from intensive micro-level
surveys and the Agricultural Census in the case of informal ,sector
employment of women since the limitations of official data are
particularly " acute in these occupations, while estimates of changes
over time in women's share of formal sector jobs (professionals,
clerical, administrative and organized industry) are mainly based on
Labour Force Survey data.

The poverty of households headed by women has emerged as an
important development issue in the recent past. Evidence from many
developing countries, specially in Latin America and Africa, has
underlined the economic vulnerability of this group and predicted an
increasing incidence of female•headed households in developing societies
[Buvinic and Youssef (1978); Kossaudji and Mueller (1983); Merrick and
Schmink (1983)]. Among Asian countries sample surveys have revealed a
significant proportion of female-headed households in Sri Lanka,
Malaysia and some states in India (Visaria 1980). In the context of
Pakistan, research in this area is virtually non-existent. Although the
questionnaires of the various censuses do provide information on sex and
other characteristics of household heads, this data are not available in
tabulated form in any of the census reports. However, a recent survey of
1000 women in Karachi conducted in 1987 makes it possible for the first
time to investigate, in detail, the characteristics of female-headed
households. The sample of 680 working women and 320 non-working women
covered a whole range of social and income classes. Among the 680
working women was included the sub-sample of 100 female heads of
households. Combined information was collected on women and their
households through a fairly lengthy questionnaire: the interview
schedule comprised questions on earnings, ethnic affiliations,
education, age, sex, and occupation of all household members, division
of domestic responsibilities in the household and employment history of
individual women.

The primary objective of the survey was to collect information
on women's productive and reproductive choices within the broader
context of the conditions in their household. Since women bear the main
responsibility of domestic work and child care, their employment outside
the house is closely interrelated with household decisions pertaining to
fertility, division of domestic duties, etc. Hence, to clearly
understand the linkages between work status and domestic roles of women,
it is necessary to collect data on both demographic and socio-economic
aspects of the household.

The main purpose of this paper is to identify variations in
demographic and economic characteristics of households by income groups.
For almost two decades now development planners have been concerned with
the issue of income disparities and poverty. Whereas previous studies in
this area for Pakistan [2; 9] have focused mainly on quantifying the
extent of poverty in the country, the present work investigates the
qualitative aspects of poorer households. It aims at providing some
empirical insight into the distinctive socio-economic and demographic
circumstances of the poor.