China s Migrant and Left-behind Children: Correlation of Parental Migration on Health, Cognitive and Non-cognitive Outcomes

With rapid urbanization, millions of people from rural areas have migrated to major cities for employment, leaving their young children at home or bringing their children to urban areas. Whether this labor migration creates substantial mental, physical and educational challenges for these left-behind and migrant children should be considered. This paper uses data from a 9824 students sample from a survey conducted by the authors in Beijing, Suzhou, Anhui and Henan. This study establishes OLS models for identifying the correlation of non-left-behind children, left-behind children and migrant children on health, cognitive and non-cognitive performance. Our empirical findings reveal that the migration of adult household members negatively affects the health status, cognitive and non-cognitive performances of left-behind children and only cognitive performance for migrant children. The effects are particularly prominent for rural children, when the mother migrates out of province. Acknowledgement : We gratefully acknowledge the financial support by National Science Foundation of China (Grants: 71603261); The Ministry of education of Humanities and Social Science project (Grants: 16YJC880107); Chinese Universities Scientific Fund (Grants: 2017RW005, 2017QC043); China Agricultural Foundation Da Bei Nong Education Fund .