The Causal Effects of Urban-to-Urban Migration on Left-behind Children’s Well-Being in China

Nan Lu, Wenting Lu, Renxing Chen () and Wanzhi Tang
Additional contact information
Nan Lu: School of Economics and Management, Nantong University, Nantong 226019, China
Wenting Lu: School of Economics and Management, Nantong University, Nantong 226019, China
Renxing Chen: Center for Quality of Life and Public Policy Research, Shandong University, Qingdao 266237, China
Wanzhi Tang: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2R3, Canada

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 5, 1-14

Abstract: As China’s urbanization process deepens, more and more residents of small and medium-sized cities are moving to large cities, and the number of left-behind children is increasing. In this paper, using data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), a nationally representative survey sample, we examine the well-being of left-behind children with urban household registration at the junior high school level and the causal effects of parental migration on their well-being. Research findings indicate that children who are left behind in urban areas are at a disadvantage in most aspects of their well-being compared to urban non-left-behind children. We examine the determinants of urban household registration for left-behind children. Children in families with lower socioeconomic status, more siblings, and poorer health were more likely to be left behind. In addition, our counterfactual framework reveals that, on average, staying behind negatively impacts the well-being of urban children, based on the propensity score matching (PSM) method. Compared to non-migrant children, left-behind children had significantly lower physical health, mental health, cognitive ability, academic performance, school affiliation, and relationships with their parents.

Keywords: migration; left-behind children; China Education Panel Survey (CEPS); propensity score matching (PSM); child well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/5/4303/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/5/4303/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:5:p:4303-:d:1083141

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().