Are “left-behind” children really left behind? A lab-in-field experiment concerning the impact of rural/urban status and parental migration on children's other-regarding preferences

Abstract Other-regarding preferences have a profound influence on both individual and societal success. In this paper, using a unique sample from China, we study the impact of two family background characteristics: parental migration and rural/urban status on both the level and the developmental formation of other-regarding preferences during childhood. Decades of economic reform have led to an unprecedented growth of economically driven rural-to-urban internal migration in China. Many migrant parents leave their children behind. According to figures from China's 2010 census, more than 61 million children from birth to 17 years were “left behind.” In this lab-in-field experiment, we use three simple allocation games to study samples from four populations: rural children left behind by both parents, rural children left behind by one parent, rural non-left-behind children, and urban children. We expected that the development of altruistic preferences would be positively associated with parental presence. However, we found this was not the case. In fact, among rural children the development of altruistic preferences from Grade 3 to Grade 5 was most pronounced among those who were left-behind by both parents. Moreover, by Grade 5, it was these children whose preferences most resembled those of the urban children.