Schooling choices and parental migration. Evidence from Mexico

This paper investigates the role of parental absence due to migration on education and labor market outcomes of children left behind in Mexico. I look at the effect of absence at different moments of a child’s educational career and estimate the impact of the timing of a parent’s migration in order to understand how mother’s and father’s inputs affect children’s outcomes at different ages. Results show that a mother’s migration when the child has to start a new level of schooling, i.e. when investment decisions on children’s education must be made, has a significant negative impact on children’s schooling. Also the duration of mother’s absence plays a role: the longer the mother’s migration, the less children are educated. I find that, when the mother migrates, daughters substitute the mother’s work in or outside the household, depending on their age.