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Parental Migration and Early Childhood Development in Rural China

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Demography

Abstract

Nearly one-quarter of all children under age 2 in China are left behind in the countryside as parents migrate to urban areas for work. We use a four-wave longitudinal survey following young children from 6 to 30 months of age to provide first evidence on the effects of parental migration on development, health, and nutritional outcomes in the critical first stages of life. We find that maternal migration has a negative effect on cognitive development: migration before children reach 12 months of age reduces cognitive development by 0.3 standard deviations at age 2. Possible mechanisms include reduced dietary diversity and engagement in stimulating activities, both known to be causally associated with skill development in early life. We find no effects on other dimensions of physical and social-emotional health.

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Notes

  1. This finding for human children echoes numerous studies using rodents showing that early maternal care has a large effect on hippocampal development in rat pups and that this operates through an epigenetic mechanism (Fish et al. 2004; Liu et al. 1997; Meaney 2001; Szyf et al. 2005).

  2. Divergent preferences, particularly with the older generation, may include increased preference toward male children. Meyerhoefer and Chen (2011) found that parental labor migration in China is associated with a significant lag in the educational progress of girls and argued that this is due to shifting girls’ time allocation toward home production. Chang et al. (2011) also showed that migration in China increases work time for girls and not boys.

  3. We are unfortunately unable to examine paternal migration because our survey did not collect data on paternal migration over time. In our survey, we collected data about the first and second caregivers, who were almost always the mother and grandmother. The share of fathers who are primary caregivers is less than 2.89% in our sample. In the first survey round (when children were 6–12 months of age), 54% of fathers were absent.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the following for project funding: the 111 Project (Grant No. B16031), Projects 71703083 and 71703084 supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), the UBS Optimus Foundation, China Medical Board, the Bank of East Asia, the H.J. Heinz Company Foundation, the Huaqiao Foundation, and Noblesse. We also thank the Editors and anonymous reviewers for constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Experimental Economics in Education (CEEE), Shaanxi Normal University, No. 620 West Chang’an Avenue, Chang’an District, Xi’an, 710119, Shaanxi, China

    Ai Yue & Yaojiang Shi

  2. School of Economics, Minzu University of China, 27 Zhongguancun South Avenue, Beijing, China

    Yu Bai

  3. China Center for Agricultural Policy, School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Renfu Luo

  4. Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Scott Rozelle & Alexis Medina

  5. Department of Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health and the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Sean Sylvia

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  1. Ai Yue
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Correspondence to Yu Bai.

Ethics declarations

This study received ethical approval from the Stanford University Institutional Review Board (IRB) (Protocol ID 25734) and from the Sichuan University Ethical Review Board (Protocol ID 2013005–01). Adult study participants and caregivers of all sample children provided informed consent prior to the start of any study activities. The Stanford and Sichuan IRBs approved a waiver of written consent. Oral consent was obtained from the caregivers by trained members of the field survey team who were trained in the consent process. Consent procedures included ten minutes devoted to consent discussion, five minutes to describe the study and five minutes for questions, and followed a set script in Chinese. At the conclusion, caregivers were asked if they understood what was requested of them.

Authors’ Contributions

AY, YB, SR, and SS conceived of the study. All authors designed the data collection strategy. AY, YB, YS, and RL collected the data. AY, YB, and SS analyzed the data. AY, AM, and SS wrote the manuscript. All authors participated in critical revisions.

Data Availability

Data and analysis code are available from the authors upon request.

Conflict of interest

None of the authors have any conflicts of interest to declare.

Preprint

This manuscript was previously circulated as a working paper titled “The Effect of Maternal Migration on Early Childhood Development in Rural China” (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2890108).

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Yue, A., Bai, Y., Shi, Y. et al. Parental Migration and Early Childhood Development in Rural China. Demography 57, 403–422 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00849-4

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