1 Research background

Since the 1980s, with the continuous deepening of China’s economic reform and the acceleration of urbanization, a large number of rural workers have migrated to cities. Since 2010, internal migration in China has become more active. According to data from China’s Seventh National Population Census conducted in 2020 (hereinafter referred to as the “Seventh Census”), the migrant population in China reached 376 million, an increase of 69.7% over 2010, and the urbanization rate reached 63.9%. The report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized pursuing integrated development of urban and rural areas, and facilitate the flows of production factors between them. The New Urbanization Implementation Plan during the 14th Five-Year Period (2021–2025) emphasized continuing to improve urbanization rate steadily. In 2020, the proportion of employees in the primary industry in China was 23.6%, and the corresponding proportion in the most developed countries was lower than 6%Footnote 1. Given China’s current policies and industrial structure, there is still room for future increase in the volume of internal migration.

Massive internal migration has led to the phenomenon of “children left-behind”, that has attracted much attention from the government, society, and academia. Due to family economic constraints, obstacles to schooling in cities, and barriers of the household registration system, in the early stage of China’s urbanization, most migrant parents left their children at home and asked other family members to help take care of them (Duan & Zhou, 2005), which gave rise to the disadvantaged population group reffered to as “children left-behind”. Early literatures mainly focused on their educational opportunities, academic performance, physical health, psychological development, etc. (Zhou et al., 2014; Bai et al., 2018; Tian et al., 2017; Ma et al., 2022). In recent years, more researches have focused on the impact of the left-behind experience on children’s higher education opportunities, labor market performance, and personality development as they reach adulthood (Lyu & Chen, 2019; Liu et al., 2020). Scholars have carried out a large number of empirical studies on the short-term and long-term effects of the “left-behind experience” on children’s development. In general, though parents’ migration for work can help increase family income and education investment for children left-behind, long-term parent-child separation has many adverse effects on children, which have even continued into their adulthood. For example, childhood left-behind experience will reduce the employment adaptability of the new-generation migrant workers, resulting in lower salary, looser family ties and weaker sense of family responsibility (Guo et al., 2015; Lyu & Chen, 2019; Wang et al., 2021).

Children Left-behind in China are mainly concentrated in rural areas, and the problems faced by rural children left-behind are more prominent. Therefore, existing studies and policies generally focus on the “rural children left-behind” group. On the one hand, the emergence of rural children left-behind is the result of the spatial transfer of a large number of rural labor force to cities in the process of urbanization. From 2010 to 2020, China’s migrant population increased by 154 million, and the percentage of the population living in urban areas increased by 14% points. The accelerated population migration and urbanization means that more individuals and families have joined the wave of migration. This corresponds to the acceleration of the population size of children left-behind driven by the market mechanism (Chen, 2021). On the other hand, the policies in recent years have created favorable conditions for migrant families to move with their children. The policy adjustments correspond to the deceleration of the population size of children left-behind. The National Programme of Action for Children (2011–2020) promulgated by the State Council of China in 2011 emphasized the provision of equal public services for migrant children including on education and health among others. The Opinions on Strengthening Care and Protection of Rural Children Left-Behind issued in 2016 mentioned “gradually reducing the occurrence of left-behind children”. The report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized the need to focus on “We must remove institutional barriers that block the social mobility of labor and talent.” This basic direction was emphasized again in the report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Under the guidance of the policy, in recent years the Chinese government has carried out institutionalized reforms in many aspects such as household registration, urban planning and education. The government has also vigorously pushed for the expanded coverage of basic public services in urban areas, which includes compulsory and pre-primary education, and the household registration of eligible rural workers in urban areas, in order to support migrants and their families to integrate into cities. Under the acceleration of market mechanism and the deceleration of policy adjustments, the academia needs to re-examine the development of rural children left-behind in China. It is essential to sort out the latest characteristics and trends of rural children left-behind, and understand the important issues they face, which is not only related to the well-being of these children and migrant families, but also the promotion of the people-centred and high-quality urbanization goal proposed by the Chinese government.

Thanks to the improvement of survey modality and the enhancement of survey management and implementation, the net undercount rate of the Seventh Census is only 0.05%, which is much lower than the internationally recognized standard of 3%. It is a high-quality census (Li et al., 2021) and provides a valuable opportunity to comprehensively and systematically assess the latest situation and trends of rural children left-behind in China. This paper uses sample data from the Long Form of the 2010 and 2020 censuses (with a sampling fraction of one per thousand) to analyze the basic situation of rural children left-behind in China, such as the size, age structure, sex composition, regional distribution, living arrangements, and educational development. It describes the changes in above aspects over the decade, identifies the problems currently faced by rural children left-behind, clarifies their urgent needs, and puts forward corresponding suggestions, so as to provide solid data support on developing policies to effectively solve relevant problems.

This paper defines rural children left-behind as: rural children aged 0–17 years who live in the location of their household registration, but who do not live together with both parents, because either one parent or both parents have migrated outside their hometown (town/township or street) for more than six months. If the father or mother of a child is not counted as a permanent resident of a particular household by the Seventh Census’ definition, it means that the parent is a migrant who has left the hometown (town/township or street) for more than six months, based on which we can identify “children that have either one or both parents migrated outside their hometown for more than six months”. We then further restrict to children whose household registration location is the same as the location of permanent residence (that is, “living in the location of their household registration”).Footnote 2

This paper identifies children left-behind through parent-child matching within the household. The method builds on and optimizes the approaches taken by Duan and Yang (2008), and Duan et al. (2013), and refers to the work of Li (2014). Since the census data does not clearly label which family members are the child’s parents, the first step is to match the child to their parents based on members’ relationship with household head. If the child cannot be successfully matched with a parent within the household, it means that the parent is not counted as a permanent resident of the household, thus meeting the main criteria of being identified as children left-behind. In order to more accurately identify rural children left-behind given diverse family structures, children in two typical situations are excluded: one is children from a single-parent familyFootnote 3; the other is children of collective households where no data is available to perform the parent-child matching within the household. In addition, considering the growing phenomenon of living outside the place of household registration in rural areas, rural children are counted as children left-behind when they live in a different town or township from their location of household registration, but still within the same county.

2 Demographic characteristics of rural children left-behind

2.1 Size and regional distribution

Estimates based on the Long Form sample data of the Seventh Census show that in 2020, children left-behind aged 0–17 years accounted for 22.5% of all children in the country, amounting to 66.93 million. The proportions of children left-behind in cities, towns, and townships are 16.9% (11.33 million), 20.7% (13.83 million), and 62.4% (41.77 million), respectively. Estimates by the same definition using the Long Form sample data of the Sixth Census show that in 2010, there were 54.91 million children left-behind nationwide, with 5.95 million, 9.26 million, and 39.7 million in cities, towns, and townships, respectively. From 2010 to 2020, the number of children left-behind increased by 12.02 million. The number of urban children left-behind (or those in cities and towns) increased by 9.95 million, an increase of 65.4%. The size of rural children left-behind had relatively small increase of only 2.07 million over the decade, or a growth of only 5.2%.

The small increase in the number of rural children left-behind is the combined effect of the decline in rural children’s population and the increase in the proportion of children left-behind among rural children. On the one hand, due to a combination of factors including population migration from rural to urban areas, declining fertility rate, and shrinking size of rural areas, the number of rural children in China has dropped from 154.44 million in 2010 to 110.31 million in 2020, or a drop of 28.6%, leading to a potential decrease in the number of rural children left-behind; on the other hand, the proportion of children left-behind among rural children has risen from 25.7% in 2010 to 37.9% in 2020, leading to a potential increase in the population size of rural children left-behind. The population size of rural children left-behind had a relatively small increase, yet their proportion among rural children has increased significantly while the rural children’s population declined drastically. This highlights the seriousness of the issue. Although this paper focuses on rural children left-behind, it is worth noting that with the continuous advancement of urbanization in the past 20 years, the out-migration of urban resident has become more and more frequent, and the number of urban children left-behind has rapidly risen to 25.16 million in 2020, accounting for 37.6% of all children left-behind.

Rural children left-behind are concentrated in a few provinces, with some provinces holding large numbers. In 2020, rural children left-behind in China were highly concentrated in Henan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hunan and other major provinces known for exporting labor services. With over 6 million rural children left-behind, Henan has the largest share (14.6%) of rural children left-behind, which is an increase of 2.4% points compared with 2010. Besides Henan, rural children left-behind in Sichuan, Guangxi, Hunan, and Guangdong also have relatively large shares of rural children left-behind in China, accounting for 8.5%, 7.6%, 7.1%, and 6.7% respectively. The above five provinces together accounted for 44.5% of the rural children left-behind in China. They were among the provinces with the largest population size of rural children left-behind in 2010, as well. Except for Hunan, who ranked seventh in the proportion of rural children left-behind in 2010, the other four provinces all ranked among the top five. In addition, provinces such as Anhui, Guizhou, and Jiangxi should not be overlooked, with each having over 2 million rural children left-behind.

2.2 Age structure

This paper divides child development into four stages based on age range: early childhood (0–2 years), pre-primary education (3–5 years), compulsory education (6–14 years) and upper secondary education (15–17 years). Figure 1 shows the population pyramid for rural children left-behind aged 0–17 years in China for 2010 and 2020.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Pyramid of rural children left-behind aged 0–17 in China, 2010 and 2020. Sources National Bureau of Statistics, 2010 and 2020 National Population Censuses

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In 2020, the share of rural children left-behind aged 0–2 years among all rural children left-behind in China was 17.1%, or 7.14 million; the share of those aged 3–5 years was 18.7%, or 7.80 million; the share of those aged 6–14 years was 54.1%, or 22.62 million; the share of those aged 15–17 years was 10.1%, or 4.21 million. Rural children left-behind aged 0–2 years accounted for 46.6% of rural children of the same age group, which was notably higher than older age groups. Generally speaking, younger rural children are more likely to be left-behind.

2.3 Sex composition

Among rural children left-behind in 2020, there were 22.16 million boys, accounting for 53.1%, and 19.61 million girls, accounting for 46.9%. The sex ratio is 113.0, slightly lower than that of rural children in China (114.3). Regardless of sex, the proportions of rural children left-behind of all ages in 2020 are much higher when compared with 2010 (see Fig. 2),Differences by sex is not obvious across most age groups, but do exist for certain ages. For example, for age group of 15–17 years, the proportion of rural children left-behind was higher among girls. This may be related to the fact that more rural boys in this age group migrate alone.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Proportion of children left-behind among rural boys and girls by age in China, 2010 and 2020 (%). Sources National Bureau of Statistics, 2010 and 2020 National Population Censuses

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2.4 Living arrangements

Table 1 shows that in 2020, 45.6% of rural children left-behind had both parents out-migrating and could not live with either parent. Among rural children left-behind, the proportion of both parents migrating was relatively low for younger ones, with the proportions being 40.4%, 43.2%, 46.5% and 47.6% for those aged 1–2 yearsFootnote 4, 3–5 years, 6–14 years and 15–17 years, respectively. Among those with only one parent out-migrating, it is more likely that fathers migrated (29.8%) versus mothers (24.6%).

Table 1 Living arrangements of rural children left-behind in China, 2010 and 2020(%)
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From 2010 to 2020, the basic migration pattern of rural children left-behind’s parents has changed, and there is an increased trend of mothers out-migrating. The proportion of rural children left-behind with mothers out-migrating has increased from 65.8% in 2010 to 70.2% in 2020. There is an even bigger increase among those whose mothers migrated alone, from 16.1 to 24.6%. This shows progress in women’s participation in the labor market over the decade, however, at the same time more children were deprived of maternal companionship in their growth. In contrast to the increased trend of mothers out-migrating, the proportion of rural children left-behind having fathers out-migrating has decreased from 83.9% in 2010 to 75.4% in 2020. Over the decade, the gap between fathers and mothers in terms of out-migrating narrowed and the proportion of rural children left-behind whose parents both out-migrating dropped from 49.7 to 45.6%.

This paper further examines rural children left-behind living with grandparents after their parents out-migrated. As shown in Table 1, in 2020, when fathers migrated, about half of rural children left-behind lived with their mothers only (14.4% of all rural children left-behind), and the other half lived with their mothers and grandparents (15.4% of all rural children left-behind); when mothers migrated, most rural children left-behind lived together with their grandparents and fathers (15.8% of all rural children left-behind), and only a minority lived with fathers only (8.8% of all rural children left-behind), which indicates that when mothers migrate, grandparents’ care of children is more common. In fact, whether both parents migrate or only one parent migrates, grandparents have assumed very important responsibilities in the care of children left-behind. In 2020, 58.3% of rural children left-behind lived with their grandparents, higher than 56.0% in 2010, indicating that grandparents’ care and support for rural children left-behind has increased in the ten years leading up to 2020.

3 Educational development of rural children left-behind

3.1 School attendance of rural children left-behind aged 3–5 years in pre-primary education

The timing of attending school has an impact on children’s long-term development, and both premature and late access to a certain stage of education will lead to a continuous decline in children’s academic performance afterwards (Mavilidi et al., 2022). For the first time, the Seventh Census included pre-primary education as a response category in the education attainment question. Among rural children left-behind aged 3–5 years, 80.7% were attending pre-primary educationFootnote 5, 4.6% had already attended primary school ahead of schedule, and the remaining 14.7% had never attended school. In terms of age, as many as 30.3% of rural children left-behind aged 3 were not attending pre-primary education; improvements were seen for those aged 4 with only 9.3% not attending pre-primary education; by the age of 5, 82.0% of rural children left-behind were attending pre-primary education, and 13.8% were attending primary school ahead of schedule.

Although the proportion of rural children left-behind receiving pre-primary education is slightly higher than that of all rural children, they face the same difficulties. There are problems in the development of kindergartens in rural areas, such as insufficient financial support, inadequate supply, low quality, and unbalanced development, which affect rural children’s opportunities of receiving pre-primary education.

3.2 School attendance of rural children left-behind aged 6–17 years

The two indicators of rural children left-behind of all age groups in 2010 and 2020 in Table 2, i.e., the attendance rateFootnote 6 and the proportion of children who failed to receive or complete compulsory education as required, show that the education Circumstances of rural children left-behind has improved in 2020 when compared to 2010.

Table 2 School attendance status of rural children left-behindaged 6–17 in China, 2010 and 2020(%)
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In 2020, the out-of-school rate of rural children left-behind aged 6–17 years (9.0%) was slightly higher than that in 2010 (7.3%), which may be due to the fact that a relatively high proportion of children aged 6 were still receiving pre-primary education. If the age range is broadened to 7–17 years, the out-of-school rate in 2020 (6.0%) was lower than that of 2010 (6.9%). It is worth mentioning that the proportion of rural children left-behind who failed to receive or complete compulsory education as required for the age groups 12–14 and 15–17 declined from 2010 (2.0% and 5.4% respectively) to 1.6% in 2020, with the decrease more evident in the 15–17 years age group. At the same time, the attendance rate of rural children left-behind aged 15–17 years has increased from 78.7% in 2010 to 88.4% in 2020, indicating that the educational opportunities of rural children left-behind of the upper secondary age have also been greatly improved.

However, there are still a considerable number of rural children left-behind aged 6–17 years in China not attending school or receiving compulsory education as required. In 2020, 9.0% of rural children left-behind aged 6–17 years were not attending school, or 2.42 million. Apart from 980,000 rural children left-behind aged 6 years who were not attending school, there were 6.0% or an estimated 1.44 million rural children left-behind aged 7–17 years out of school, of which 490 thousand were aged 15–17 years. At the same time, in 2020, 6.2% of rural children left-behind aged 6–17 years failed to receive or complete compulsory education as required, or an estimated 1.65 million. Apart from 980 thousand children aged 6 years not attending school, 670,000 rural children left-behind aged 7–17 years failed to receive or complete compulsory education as required (accounting for 2.8%).

In 2020, there was basically no differences in educational opportunities between rural children left-behind and all rural children. In 2010, the overall attendance rate of rural children left-behind was slightly better than that of rural children, thanks to the increased income brought about by their parents’ out-migration for work. In recent years, with the further universalization of compulsory education and the vigorous development of upper secondary education, the advantages of rural children left-behind in education opportunities are no longer evident. However, it is worth noting that there are still large rural-urban differences in the education status at the post-compulsory education stage. In 2020, 88.0% of rural children aged 15–17 years were attending upper secondary schools, which is 6.5% points lower than urban children.

3.3 Over-age attendance of rural children left-behind

In this paper, over-age attendance refers to children who are attending a level of education even though their age exceeds the prescribed age range for that level. According to the provisions of the Compulsory Education Law, China’s prescribed age range for primary education is 6–11 years old, for lower secondary education it is 12–14 years old, and for upper secondary education it is 15–17 years old. The revised Compulsory Education Law of 2006 reaffirmed the importance of age-appropriate school enrollment and defined the relevant obligations of the child’s legal guardian. Studies have shown that over-age students face more challenges, for example, they are more likely to drop out of school. Therefore, in addition to ensuring children have access to education, efforts should be undertaken to ensure they are accessing age-appropriate education.

Despite continuous improvements made in reducing children’s over-age attendance in China, it is still relatively common among rural children left-behind in 2020. In a small number of rural areas in China, children are allowed to enroll in primary school at age 7. It may be more practical to assume that children enroll in primary school at age 7. As shown in Fig. 3, among rural children left-behind across the country in 2020, 13.4% of children aged 13 years were attending primary school, 5.6% of children aged 14 years were attending primary school, 32.3% of children aged 16 years were attending lower secondary school, and 14.2% of students aged 17 years were attending lower secondary school. Compared with all rural children, the over-age attendance rate of rural is similar at primary schools, but higher at lower secondary schools.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Proportion of over-age students among rural children left-behind and rural children aged 12–17 years in China in 2020. Sources National Bureau of Statistics, 2020 National Population Census

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4 Summary and discussion

The population structure, living arrangements, and educational development of rural children left-behind in China in 2020 share some basic characteristics and patterns with those of 2010. On the other hand, due to the influence of the overall population structure, family transformation and educational development, there are new developments, highlighting the typical characteristics of the survival and development of rural children left-behind and their families in China.

The number of rural children left-behind in China is still large, and the temporary splitting of families has weakened the functions of the families left-behind, which has brought many safety concerns to the growth and development of a large number of children left-behind. From 2010 to 2020, internal migration in China became more active, which has prompted the increase in the number of rural children left-behind in China. The population size of rural children left-behind had a relatively small increase from 2010 to 2020, however, this happened during a time period when rural child population has declined drastically with a large rural population out-migrated and the fertility rate declined. The fact that the population size of rural children left-behind still steadily increased and their proportion among rural children increased even more significantly highlights the seriousness of the issue.

One of the main reasons for the persistent existence of a large number of children left-behind is that children from migrant families face obstacles and institutional barriers to migrate with parents. Migrant parents had to choose to leave their children in hometowns facing difficulties in children’s education and life in urban areas. What’s more, nearly half of rural children left-behind are separated from both parents, which expose them to multiple disadvantages.

As mothers migrate more often, younger rural children left-behind need urgent attention. From 2010 to 2020, the number of migrant women in China increased from 104 million to 177 million, an increase of 71.1%. Apart from traditional motherhood, the role women played in economic function of the family is becoming more and more important. Increasingly women’s decision on migration has become more autonomous, rather than subordinative to other family members. In that sense, population migration is a phased process. With the convergence of male and female participation in the migration, most of the married migrant population has entered the phase of couple migration; next, the aim of migrant families would be to bring their children for family reunion.

China has already established a preliminary care system for rural children left-behind, yet it is a long-term, systematic and strategic project. In 2016, the State Council issued the Opinions on Strengthening the Care and Protection of Rural Children Left-Behind, which put forward the long-term goal of “gradually reducing the occurrence of leaving children behind from the source”. Since then, the State Council issued a number of supporting policy documents, and the most recent one is the Three-Year Action Plan for Improving the Quality of Care (Protection) Services for Rural Children Left-Behind and Vulnerable Children, released in December 2023. The National Programme of Action for Children (2021–2030) continues to emphasize the need to “reduce the occurrence of leaving children behind from the source”. In the long run, continuing to implement the above-mentioned policies is the fundamental solution to the problem of leaving rural children behind.

In early times China’s migrant population primarily came from rural areas, and children left-behind were predominantly in rural areas. In the past two decades, the migration participation rate of urban population has been increasing. In 2020, urban children left-behind accounted for more than one third of all children left-behind. However, existing policies focusing on children left-behind almost all target rural areas. The government should proceed with designing a policy framework for urban children left-behind.

In addition to children left-behind, migrant children are also worth attention. The “migrant” and “left-behind” status of children can be seen as different levels of participation in urbanization by children of migrant families, and migrant children participate more. Although migrant children and children left-behind are all from migrant families, the policy support they need are very different. With the current situation, it is necessary to allow children left-behind to have the opportunity to migrate with their parents for parental companionship, so that they have the opportunity to enjoy equal rights of citizens and fuller social integration.