When a degree-educated son or daughter lives at home with parents who never went to school, education is expected to lift household spending.
According to the Household Integrated Economic Survey for 2024-25 (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics), such households have a median monthly consumption of Rs 13,200 per adult equivalent. For graduate households where at least one parent went to school, the figure is Rs 20,300.
The chart follows 1,883 households where neither parent attended school and a son or daughter aged 25 to 40 is recorded as a member. It groups them by the best-educated child in that age range. Living standards are measured by consumption, in cash and in kind, adjusted for household size. Each child under 18 counts as 0.8 of an adult.
HIES surveys each household once. It compares families with different levels of schooling; it does not measure a family’s spending before and after a child graduates. The comparison also leaves out graduates who have formed or joined another household.
Median household spending rises with the level of children’s schooling. Where none of the eligible children ever attended school, median monthly consumption is Rs 8,300 per adult equivalent; where they reached intermediate or diploma level, it is Rs 11,400; and where they reached degree level, it is Rs 13,200. The median for degree level is 59 per cent above the never-attended group and 16 per cent above intermediate, the largest gap between adjacent groups. The distributions overlap substantially: schooling does not sort households neatly by living standards.
Graduate households are only slightly above the national middle. Their median consumption is 8 per cent above the national household median of Rs 12,300, and 46 per cent fall below it. Across all 939 eligible graduate households, including those with schooled parents, the share below the national median is about one in five. Among those with unschooled parents, it is nearly one in two.
Parents’ schooling marks another large divide. The 770 graduate households where at least one parent attended school have a median consumption of Rs 20,300, 54 per cent above those with unschooled parents. Where a parent also holds a degree, the median is Rs 30,100. These groups all have a graduate child, but the analysis does not hold the child’s qualification, subject or institution constant. It cannot isolate the effect of the parents’ education from other differences between the households.
Most of the graduate households with unschooled parents have someone working: five in six have at least one graduate who reports work. That includes unpaid family work as well as paid employment and work in a business or farm. It tells us whether graduates work, but does not establish how much their work contributes to household consumption.
The families observed here are specifically those whose graduate children remain members of the parental household. Resident graduate daughters are mostly unmarried, so the chart also offers a sons-only view. This lowers the degree median to Rs 12,062, against Rs 20,913 for graduate households with schooled parents. The size of the gap changes; the parental-schooling divide is present in both views.
A degree is a substantial educational achievement for a child whose parents never went to school. Yet nearly half of these graduate households still spend less per adult equivalent than the national household median.
Sample. HIES 2024-25 surveyed 30,123 households. We include recorded members, including those temporarily absent. There are 10,557 households with a recorded head in which the head and any spouse recorded as a member report never attending school. Of these, 2,440 have at least one of the head’s own children aged 25 to 40 recorded as a member. Excluding households that received cash remittances from Pakistan or abroad in the past year leaves 1,936; excluding those with an eligible child still enrolled leaves 1,895; excluding households with an eligible child whose qualification is recorded as ‘other’ leaves 1,883. Each household is grouped by its best-educated eligible child. The schooled-parent comparison applies the same rules where the head or spouse attended school; 770 of those households have a graduate child. Together with the 169 graduate households with unschooled parents, this gives 939 eligible graduate households. Children who head their own households or are recorded in another relationship to the head are outside this comparison.
Schooling. ‘Never attended’ is the questionnaire’s own response. Other groups use the highest completed qualification: primary or below includes pre-primary; intermediate includes diplomas; degree includes two-year and four-year bachelor’s, master’s, professional and research degrees. The six chart groups contain 677, 309, 286, 276, 166 and 169 households, respectively. The degree category does not imply that graduates hold identical qualifications.
Sons and daughters. The default includes both because the unit of comparison is the household. The sons-only view applies the same rules to sons aged 25 to 40: 1,723 households, with 596, 292, 282, 264, 158 and 131 in the six schooling groups. Its degree median is Rs 12,062; the schooled-parent benchmark is Rs 20,913 across 652 graduate households. In the main sample, 87 per cent of resident graduate daughters have never married, compared with 23 per cent of all graduate women aged 25 to 40. This difference in composition matters when interpreting the two views; it does not by itself explain the difference in consumption.
Parents’ schooling. Among eligible graduate households, grouping by the highest schooling of the head or spouse gives medians of Rs 13,200 where neither attended school (169 households), Rs 15,852 at primary to class nine (186), Rs 17,853 at matric or intermediate (307), and Rs 30,104 at degree level (270). This breakdown uses 932 households. Seven of the broader 939-household comparison are excluded because at least one parent’s qualification cannot be classified: five have an ‘other’ qualification and two are currently attending without a completed-qualification response. These additional medians are reported here; the downloadable percentile table contains the chart data.
Consumption and weights. Consumption uses the aggregate built for this issue’s tax analysis, including cash and in-kind consumption and imputed rent. It is divided by adult equivalents, counting each child under 18 as 0.8 of an adult. Medians, percentiles and household shares use household survey weights. Counts are unweighted; work and marital-status shares for individuals use person survey weights. Work is the questionnaire’s reported-work measure, not an unemployment rate. The 169-household degree group has an effective sample of about 134 households, so its outer percentiles are less precise. Percentages use unrounded estimates. The chart’s percentile table is degree_family_quantiles.csv, produced by data/pk-degree-family/build_degree_family.py.