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• Examined impacts of different parental migration arrangements in China. • Used difference-in-differences models with propensity score weighting. • Reconsidered "left behind" terminology for children separated from migrant parents. Millions of children live apart from their parents who migrate for work. This dynamic raises questions about parental migration's impact on children's schooling. This paper investigated how Chinese junior high school students’ educational performance was shaped by the specific patterns of parental migration: whether it was only the mother, only the father, or both who migrate. The study analyzed data from 4204 students through a nationally representative panel survey, comparing children who experienced parental migration between two survey waves and those who did not. Difference-in-differences models were paired with propensity score weighting to estimate the immediate effects of parental migration. Results indicated that children's educational performance was heterogeneously affected by different arrangements of parental migration. Children's academic performance declined when mothers migrated alone, a pattern not mirrored when only fathers or both parents migrated. The findings indicate that the adverse effects of parental absence outweigh the financial benefits from migration, particularly in the scenario of mother-only migration.
Jiancheng Gu (Tue,) studied this question.