Effect of Parental Migration on the Academic Performance of Left‐behind Middle School Students in Rural China

• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Author: Lili Li,Jingchun Nie,Lei Wang
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12193

45

China & World Economy / 45–59, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2017

©2017 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Effect of Parental Migration on the Academic

Performance of Left-behind Middle School

Students in Rural China

Lili Li, Lei Wang, Jingchun Nie*

Abstract

China’s rapid development and urbanization over the past 30 years have caused large

numbers of rural residents to migrate to urban areas in search of work. This has

created a generation of children who remain behind in rural areas when their parents

migrate for work. Previous research has found mixed impacts of parental migration

on the educational achievement of left-behind children (LBC), perhaps because

of methodological deficiencies and lack of recognition of the heterogeneity of this

population of children. Our study attempts to examine the impact of six types of parental

migration on the academic achievement of a rural junior high school sample. Our study

uses a panel of 7148 junior high school students to implement a difference-in-difference

analysis and finds that parental migration has a negative and significant impact on

the academic achievement of junior high school students. Our study suggests that the

Chinese Government should implement measures to dismantle barriers to the human

capital accumulation of LBC to ensure sustainable economic growth and human capital

development in China.

Key words: academic performance, left-behind children, parental migration, rural China

JEL codes: I20; I25; I28

I. Introduction

China’s rapid development and urbanization over the past 30 years have caused large

numbers of rural residents to migrate to urban areas for work (e.g. Hu et al., 2008;

*Lili Li, PhD canditate, Center for Experimental Economics in Education, Shaanxi Normal University, China.

Email: lilili2996113@126.com; Lei Wang (corresponding author), Associate Professor, Center for Experimental

Economics in Education, Shaanxi Normal University, China. Email: wangleiml@snnu.edu.cn; Jingchun Nie,

Assistant Professor, Center for Experimental Economics in Education, Shaanxi Normal University, China.

Email: niejingchun@yeah.net.