Personal Income Distribution and Personal Savings in Pakistan: 1963/64

One of the objectives of Pakistan’s Third Five Year Plan is “to make sub¬stantial progress towards achieving certain specific social objectives such as diminishing inequalities in the distribution of income ” [4, p.39]. The main purpose of the present study is to measure these inequalities. As the basic source we have used provides data on private consumption as well as on personal income, some rough calculations on personal savings (as residuals) have been included in this paper. Income distribution and savings in Pakistan have been studied by others in the past. A few papers have appeared in this Review and elsewhere [3; 6 and 10]. However, due to the limitations of data, all of them have been confined to the coverage of particular geographical areas, population groups or industrial sectors, whereas the present paper, in principle, deals with all personal income and savings in the country. The data for this study were mainly obtained from the “Quarterly Surveys of Current Economic Conditions” conducted by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) during the fiscal year 1963/64. Since similar information was not available for other years, the scope of the present study had to be limited to the one year, 1963/64. This severe limitation must be fully kept in mind when conclusions are drawn on the basis of our findings. While the results may be valid for 1963/64, their generalization over time would depend on the degree of stability of the various functional and structural relationships involved. E.g., aggregate personal savings rates are probably very