Return of migrant workers, educational investment in children and intergenerational mobility in China

Xu Junwu, Chen Zhaoxiong and JunJie Wu

Economic Analysis and Policy, 2022, vol. 76, issue C, 997-1009

Abstract: The slowdown in China’s economic growth in the past decade has forced many migrant workers to return or plan to return to their rural hometowns temporarily. Extant studies on intergenerational mobility pay less attention to temporary migrant households. This paper investigates how migrant father’s return intention influences children’s educational outcomes and permanent incomes using a high-quality nationwide dataset of China (CLDS2012-2018). It finds that though there is no significant correlation between fathers’ and children’s educational attainments, the higher the return probability of the father, the less educational investment he would make in his child. This paper contributes to the literature in two ways: theoretically, it provides a new perspective to observe the intergenerational mobility of migrant workers; and methodologically, it corrects life cycle bias by controlling for the ages of fathers and children and using multi-year mean incomes.

Keywords: Intergenerational mobility; Migrant workers; Return migration; Educational investment; Intergenerational income elasticity; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:76:y:2022:i:c:p:997-1009

DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2022.10.005

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