The impact of parental migration on non-cognitive abilities of left behind children in northwestern China

Despite the vast literature surrounding various aspects of left behind children (LBC)’s development in China, very few studies have examined the development of, and impact on their non-cognitive abilities as a result of parental migration. Using survey data consisting of 5002 eighth graders from 160 middle schools in northwestern China, this paper investigates how parental migration affects children’s non-cognitive abilities, as is measured by Big Five components of conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness, as well as children’s grit. We narrow our analysis to long run and short run migration subsamples and use the propensity score matching method to address the potential selection bias issue. Our results show that mother’s migration is particularly harmful to the development of children’s non-cognitive abilities, as mother is usually the primary caregiver and mother’s migration makes less economic contribution to the family. In the long run, LBC with migrant mother tend to have lower levels of conscientiousness and grit; they also have higher level of neuroticism (or lower level of emotional stability). In the short run, when mother migrates, children tend to have lower levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness.