Does parental migration during childhood affect children’s lifetime educational attainment? Evidence from Mexico

Abstract

Existing scholarship reveals important and competing influences of parental migration on children’s educational trajectories. On the one hand, in the short term, left-behind children commonly take on additional housework and sometimes place less emphasis on education if they aspire to follow in their parents’ migratory footsteps. On the other hand, parental migration often leads to monetary transfers (remittances), which reduces financial pressure on sending households and can strengthen educational aspi-ra tions among children left behind. Because previous studies examined these effects on children still completing their educations, the cumulative impact of parental migration on children’s educational attainment remains uncertain. In this study, we use retrospective life history data from the Mexican Migration Project to link parental migrations occur-ring during childhood with children’s educational attainment measured in adulthood. Using a novel counterfactual approach, we find that parental migration during childhood is associated with increased years of schooling and higher probabilities of completing lower-secondary school, entering upper-secondary school, and completing upper-sec ondary school. These associations were strongest among children whose parents did not complete primary school and those living in rural areas. Results from a placebo test suggest that these positive associations cannot be attributed to unobserved household characteristics related to parental migration, which supports a causal interpretation of our main findings. Thus, our analysis suggests that, on average, and particularly among more-dis advantaged households, the long-term educational benefits associated with parental migration outweigh short-term disruptions and strain associated with parental absence.