Childhood Left-behind Experience And Adult Labor Market Performance

Using Rural-Urban Migrants in China survey,this paper intends to study the effects of childhood left-behind experience on adulthood labor market performance,especially selfemployment.The study finds that self-employment is a low-skilled and low-productivity job in China's labor market.Migrants with left-behind experience in childhood are more likely to be selfemployment.Furthermore,the two-stage least square regression is carried out by using the proportion of the home city population as the instrumental variable,and the results are still robust.Besides,we analyze the effect of different left-behind stages and different parental absence.In particular,those whose mothers migrated and those whose parents migrated while they were in the primary school stage are more likely to have such an effect.Human capital and social integration play important roles here.The left-behind experience causes worse academic performance and lower skills,thus more disadvantaged to get jobs in the labor market.However,early contact with society helps them to accumulate social interactions and resources that lead to self-employment.