Impact of Internal Migration Diversity on Child Welfare: Evidence from Vietnam

This study uses the Vietnam Living Standards Households Survey 2018 to document the relationship between birthplace diversity and child welfare in Vietnam. To address the endogeneity issue of birthplace diversity, we construct an instrumental variable. The endogeneity-corrected estimates show that a 1 percent increase in birthplace diversity significantly increases education expenditure per capita for children aged 2 to 18 by 0.9 percent and health expenditure for children aged 6 to 11 by 0.5 percent. We document an income channel through which birthplace diversity affects child welfare. Our instrumental variable estimation provides consistent results when we use an alternative instrumental variable. Our findings suggest that promoting migration is likely to be an effective way of enhancing the welfare of children and increasing economic prosperity.