The effect of parental labor migration on children’s educational progress in rural china

Due to China’s restrictive household registration system and increasing educational costs tens of millions of internal labor migrants have difficulty enrolling their children in urban schools. As a result, many children are left behind in rural areas when their parents seek urban employment. Using data from two provinces in northeastern China we find that parental labor migration is associated with a .7 grade-level lag in educational attainment among girls. Given that our models control for educational costs and total consumption expenditure, we interpret this as resulting from a re-allocation of girls’ time towards home production in migrant households.