Rural-Urban Migration and Its Consequences on Rural Children: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Rural-urban adult migration, mainly adult male migration makes heavy demand on all family members, but especially on children who are left behind in rural area to shoulder the responsibility of agriculture production and food security. Labor shortage due to rural-urban adult migration may mean that children in rural area often have to face tighter time schedules and patterns of time use and human energy inputs required in agriculture production. The study reveals the impact of rural-urban migration on rural children. In this study, sample is restricted to households that own and/or operate agricultural land in rural area. A purposive sampling is adopted to select villages and this research work covers 500 sample households. The study is based on link between rural-urban migration of adult persons and child labor in rural area. The empirical result shows that an additional rural migrant of a household increases the probability of having child worker in that household by approximately 51%. In addition, this study identifies that children of migrant households receive less preventive health care in their infancy. The study also shows that an additional adult worker of a household increases the probability of having child worker in that household by 29%. For this reason, this study supports the hypothesis that children are the last economic resource of a household. Keywords: