What happens to children's education when their parents emigrate? Evidence from Sri Lanka

Vengadeshvaran Sarma and Rasyad Parinduri

International Journal of Educational Development, 2016, vol. 46, issue C, 94-102

Abstract: We examined the effects of parental emigration on the education of the children left behind in Sri Lanka. Using access to foreign employment agencies as a source of exogenous variation in parental migration, we estimated two-stage least squares models of the children's school enrolment, access to private tuition, class-age gap (the difference between a child's school year and the child's age), and educational spending. Overall, parental migration had no statistically significant effect on any of the outcomes; however, analyses by migrant gender show that the effects of parental migration were heterogeneous. When the mother migrates and the father stays behind, the education of the children worsens; when the father migrates and the mother stays behind, it improves. There is also some evidence that boys, younger children, and children of less-educated parents gain more from parental migration.

Keywords: Parental migration; Children's education; South Asia; Sri Lanka (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I22 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: What happen to children's education when their parents emigrate? Evidence from Sri Lanka (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:injoed:v:46:y:2016:i:c:p:94-102

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.11.007

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