The emigration of adult children and smoking behaviors of parents

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of adult children’s migration on the smoking behavior of rural parents who are left behind and raise the concern that the rural residents’ increasing tendency to migrate to urban areas in China nowadays could encourage such a behavior. Design/methodology/approach - Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey and applying propensity score matching method and individual-level fixed effects model, this paper addresses the potential endogeneity issues that may arise between the children’s migration decisions and parental smoking behavior. Findings - This study’s results indicate that rural parents left behind by their emigrant children indeed are more likely to sustain their smoking habit. The validated smoking effect of emigration calls for effective government programs that entail intervention to curb such potentially aggravating health risk, especially among middle-aged and older fathers. Originality/value - This paper is the first to examine the impact of children’s migration on the smoking behavior of left-behind parents in rural households in China. Our findings call for immediate attention to the smoking behavior of older age cohort in China as the scale of rural−urban migration trend is expected to increase. Moreover, given that many countries in Asia, such as India, Vietnam and Indonesia, are confronting similar issues, our findings could provide useful implications for smoking cessation and control policies in those countries.