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Does wealth matter? An assessment of China's rural-urban migration on the education of left-behind children

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  • Yang, Guanyi
  • Bansak, Cynthia

Abstract

This paper decomposes the impact of parental migration on the education of children left behind. In particular, we examine whether children are enrolled in school on a timely basis according to their age when their parents are away. We found both theoretical and empirical evidence to support that parental migration generates a strong positive impact on timely enrollment if a child is from a less wealthy background. However, the effect decreases with family wealth, and reverses after reaching a threshold; we find this point using family house size as our proxy and the turning point occurs at a moderate size of approximately 148 square meters. In addition, we find a compensating effect that migrants tend to spend more on a child's education investment to offset for the loss of parental time care. Lastly, we found the overall impact of parental migration is negative on the timely enrollment of child. Thus, with the important heterogeneities attributed to wealth, our results suggest that the left behind children of more affluent parents may be pushed into worse human capital outcomes; given the rapid development of China, it may be the case that the current cohort of left behind children is less likely to be enrolled in school than earlier cohorts.

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  • Yang, Guanyi & Bansak, Cynthia, 2020. "Does wealth matter? An assessment of China's rural-urban migration on the education of left-behind children," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:59:y:2020:i:c:s1043951x19301269
    DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2019.101365
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    2. Yue Zhang & Xiaodong Zheng, 2022. "Internal migration and child health: An investigation of health disparities between migrant children and left-behind children in China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(3), pages 1-15, March.
    3. Bansak, Cynthia & Jiang, Xuan & Yang, Guanyi, 2022. "Sibling spillovers in rural China: A story of sisters," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    4. Bansak, Cynthia & Jiang, Xuan & Yang, Guanyi, 2020. "Sibling Spillover in Rural China: A Story of Sisters and Daughters," IZA Discussion Papers 13127, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Yulia A. Seliverstova, 2021. "Early Childhood Education In Russia: The Interrelation Of Income Level And Parental Investment," HSE Working papers WP BRP 61/EDU/2021, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    6. Zheng, Xiaodong & Fang, Zuyi & Wang, Yajun & Fang, Xiangming, 2022. "When left-behind children become adults and parents: The long-term human capital consequences of parental absence in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    7. Xiaomeng Zhao & Lin Liu, 2022. "The Impact of Urbanization Level on Urban–Rural Income Gap in China Based on Spatial Econometric Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-23, October.

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