Comment on “The Effect of Parental Absence on Child Development in Rural China”

• Published date: 01 January 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12167
• Author: Chikako Yamauchi
• Date: 01 January 2017

Comment on “TheEffectofParentalAbsence

on Child Development in Rural China”

Chikako YAMAUCHI†

National GraduateInstitute for Policy Studies(GRIPS)

JEL codes: A20, J13

Wu and Zhang (2017) analyze how children are affected in terms of their cognitive and

non-cognitive skills when their parents are away from home for work purposes. This is

an important issue because, if the formation of these types of human capital is hampered,

it can affect not only the welfare of those children, but also the quality of the labor force

in the future.

Given this importance, there has been a growing interest in empirically examining the

impact of parental migration. Earlier studies have focused on the impact on educational

attainment (for example, enrollment status and years of education) and time use (for

example, time spent on studying/tutoring). A few recent studies have looked at the effects

on educationalachievement (test scores)and one has examined the effects on non-cognitive

skills (Leng and Park, 2010). Wu and Zhang (2017) provide a new set of evidence on test

scores and non-cognitive skills. In order to measure non-cognitive skills, they use the

Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale, which consists of children’s subjective

assessment of whether they agree with statements such as “I am well behaved in school,”

“Iamsmart,”and “I have a pleasant face.”

Methodologically, they use the individual-level fixed effects model. While there is a

possibility of bias in the estimated effect of parental absence due to the possiblecorrelation

between changes in parental absence status and time-varying unobserved factors affecting

the outcomes, in theworking paper version of their paper, itis argued that the fixed effects

estimates are likely to provide a lower bound for the impact of parental absence.

Wu and Zhang’s results show that parental absence (defined as both parents being

away) has significant, negative effects on both cognitive and non-cognitive skills. While

the analysis is carefully conducted and the results provide important insights, some

conceptual discussion seems to be lacking and an explanation is lacking when some results

are inconsistent with previous findings in the literature.

First, it wouldbe helpful to discuss and examine howcurrent and past parental absence

affects children’s current outcomes. For instance, loneliness might not become severe if

parental absenceis limited to only one school term.Are the results driven by those children

whose parents have been away for several school terms rather than just for one or two

terms?

†Correspondence: ChikakoYamauchi, National GraduateInstitute for Policy Studies(GRIPS), 7-22-1

Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-8677, Japan. Email:c-yamauchi@grips.ac.jp

doi: 10.1111/aepr.12167 Asian EconomicPolicy Review (2017) 12, 135–136

©2017 JapanCenter for EconomicResearch 135

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