Father's Labour Migration and Children's School Discontinuation in Rural Mozambique

Abstract

We examine how the discontinuation of schooling among left-behind children is related to multiple dimensions of male labor migration: the accumulation of migration experience, the timing of these migration experiences in the child’s life course, and the economic success of the migration. Our setting is rural southern Mozambique, an impoverished area with massive male labor out-migration. Results show that fathers’ economically successful labor migration is more beneficial for children’s schooling than unsuccessful migration or non-migration. There are large differences, however, by gender: compared to sons of non-migrants, sons of migrant fathers (regardless of migration success) have lower rates of school discontinuation, while daughters of migrant fathers have rates of school discontinuation no different than daughters of non-migrants. Furthermore, accumulated labor migration across the child’s life course is beneficial for boys’ schooling, but not girls’. Remittances sent in the past year reduce the rate of discontinuation for sons, but not daughters.

Timing and duration of paternal migration and the educational attainment of left‐behind children: Evidence from rural China

“…Therefore, parental migration that happens before a child is two has an overall positive association with school enrollment. This result is consistent with the findings in Yabiku and Agadjanian (), and literature on child development provides evidence for this view. For example, Aughinbaugh and Gittleman () suggested that the income effect was significant and positive on child development.…”

“…Of those studies, their estimates are often infected by having small sample sizes in each category of household migration status, especially in the category of households with migrant mother and nonmigrant father, and thus are prone to lack statistical power and stability. 3 An alternative strategy is to focus only on paternal migration, which is the preferred strategy when using data from countries where fathers are much more likely to migrate than mothers (Antman, 2011(Antman, , 2012Creighton, Park, & Teruel, 2009;Kuhn, 2006;Lee & Park, 2010;Nobles, 2011;Yabiku & Agadjanian, 2017). Even for this refined group, the results are mixed.…”

“…In contrast, using another set of Mexican data (Mexican Family Life Survey), Creighton et al (2009) found that children with fathers who migrated internationally were more likely to drop out of upper secondary school relative to children in two-parent households, while the dropout rates between children with fathers who migrated domestically and children in two-parent households were not significantly different. Studying labor out-migration from rural southern Mozambique, Yabiku and Agadjanian (2017) found that fathers' economically successful migration was beneficial for children's schooling, in terms of school continuation, and this effect was only significant for boys. Lee and Park (2010) studied children in Gansu province in China, and they found that paternal migration reduced boys' enrollment in school, but had no significant effect on girls' enrollment.…”

“…The literature on the relationship between the timing and duration of parental migration and children's educational outcomes is sparse. To my knowledge, Yabiku and Agadjanian (2017) is the only study that examines the relationship between the timing and duration of paternal migration and children's educational outcome. Using data from Mozambique, they found that accumulated paternal migration across the child's life course was beneficial for boys' schooling, but not girls'.…”

Fathers’ Migration and Academic Achievement among Left-behind Children in India: Evidence of Continuity and Change in Gender Preferences

“…Sarma and Parinduri (2016), for example, argue that migration's advantages are not necessarily experienced by low-income families, as the process of migration is expensive and remittances are primarily used to cover expenses associated with migration's cost. The "success of migration" is, thus, a critical factor in determining whether fathers' migration is beneficial for children's education (Yabiku and Agadjanian 2017). "Success of migration" is defined as an improvement in the left-behind household's living conditions due to fathers' migration (ibid).…”