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How does internal migration affect the emotional health of elderly parents left-behind?

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  • Juliane Scheffel

    (Leeds University Business School)

  • Yiwei Zhang

Abstract

The ageing population resulting from the one-child policy and massive flows of internal migration in China pose major challenges to elderly care in rural areas where elderly support is based on a traditional inter-generational family support mechanism. We use data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study to examine how migration of an adult child affects the emotional health of elderly parents left-behind. We identify the effects using fixed effects and IV approaches which rely on different sources of variation. We find that migration reduces happiness by 6.6 percentage points and leads to a 3.3 percentage points higher probability of loneliness. CES-D scores of elderly parents are severely increased pushing average scores close to the cut-off indicating clinical levels of depressive symptoms. As emotional health is a key determinant of the overall health status, our findings have significant impacts on economic development in China.

Suggested Citation

  • Juliane Scheffel & Yiwei Zhang, 2019. "How does internal migration affect the emotional health of elderly parents left-behind?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(3), pages 953-980, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:32:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s00148-018-0715-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s00148-018-0715-y
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    4. Kumar, Sneha, 2021. "Offspring's labor migration and its implications for elderly parents' emotional wellbeing in Indonesia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 276(C).
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Internal migration; China; Mental health; Elderly parents; Left-behind;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

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