Title
Does parental absence reduce cognitive achievements? Evidence from rural China
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Journal of Development Economics
Publication Date
11-1-2014
Volume
111
First Page
181
Last Page
195
Keywords
China, Cognitive achievement, Left-behind children, Migrating parents
Abstract
Many children worldwide are left-behind by parents migrating for work - over 61 million in rural China alone, almost half of whom are left-behind by both parents. While previous literature considers impacts of one parent absent on educational inputs (e.g., study time, enrollment, schooling attainment), this study directly investigates impacts on children's learning (test scores) and distinguishes impacts of absence of one versus both parents. Dynamic panel methods that control for both unobserved individual heterogeneity and endogeneity in parental absence are used with data collected from rural China. The estimates indicate significant negative impacts of being left-behind by both parents on children's cognitive development, reducing their contemporary achievements by 5.4 percentile points for math and 5.1 percentile points for Chinese, but much smaller insignificant impacts of being left-behind by one parent. Cross-sectional evidence indicates that only absence of both parents is associated with substantially lower family inputs in after-school tutoring.
DOI
10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.09.004
Print ISSN
03043878
E-ISSN
18726089
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Zhang, H., Behrman, J. R., Fan, C. S., Wei, X., & Zhang, J. (2014). Does parental absence reduce cognitive achievements? Evidence from rural China. Journal of Development Economics, 111, 181-195. doi: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.09.004
