The Impact Of Parents Going Out And Returning To Their Hometown On The Mental Health Of Left-behind Children

Over the last few decades,our country has a rapid growth in economy and a quick development of urbanization.Large numbers of rural residents start to migrate from their homes in the countryside to urban areas for better jobs and opportunities.Most migrants have to leave their children behind in home communities with a surrogate caregiver due to many difficulties.As a consequence,a new group has emerged in China known as left-behind children.The emergence of this group has drawn strong attention from our society because of the separation of their parents.In general,most literature on the separation of children from their parents shows a positive association between being left-behind and mental health problems,including higher rates of anxiety,loneliness,and personality disorder.However,there are some studies which hold that there are no connections between parents’ migration and the mental health of left-behind children,such as social anxiety.In fact,there are some weaknesses of these previous studies,such as they usually rely on cross-sectional so that they fail to explore the causal effects,a number of studies are based on relatively small samples in single geographic regions,and they often neglect the heterogeneous impact.In addition,less attention has been paid to the effects of parental return-migration.As the government encourages migrant workers to return home,the effects of return-migration need to be explored.The overall goal of this study is to examine the effects of parental out-migration and return-migration on the mental health of left-behind children,in the hope that effective measures can be found to improve their mental health levels.To meet this goal,the study interviewed 17,635 students from four and five grade in Yulin and Tianshui.The mental health test(MHT),social anxiety scale for children(SASC),and self-esteem scale(SES)were used.The effects of out-migration and return-migration are divided into two parts.First,the study describes the prevalence of parental out-migration or return-migration among households in our sample.Second,the study presents the correlations between mental health scores and parental out-migration or return-migration.Third,the study uses difference-in-difference and matching approaches to estimate whether there exists a causal relationship between parental out-migration or return-migration and the mental health of left-behind children.Forth,the study examines the heterogeneous impacts of parental out-migration or return-migration on their mental health tests scores,such as his/her baseline mental health level,and a student’s gender.In sum,this study has two main conclusions.First,parental out-migration has a significant negative impact on the mental health of left-behind children,as they tend to exhibit higher levels of anxiety and lower levels of self-esteem.In addition,the impacts of parental out-migration varies by different sample characteristics,such as parental out-migration has more influences on left-behind children who have lower general anxiety,lower social anxiety,and lower self-esteem,and parental out-migration tends to have more influences on female’s general anxiety and social anxiety.Second,parental return-migration has no significant effect on the mental health of left-behind children.However,the impacts of parental return-migration varies by different sample characteristics,such as parental return-migration has more influences on left-behind children who have lower general anxiety,lower social anxiety,and lower self-esteem,and parental return-migration tends to have more influences on female’s general anxiety and social anxiety.In the end,this study gives some policy suggestions to prevent the mental health of left-behind children in the view of government,school,and family.We hope that left-behind children can have fewer difficulties and the development of their mental health can get better and better.