Research On The Impact Of Rural Parents’ Migrant Working On Left-behind Children’s Higher Education

In the past 40 years of reform and opening up,the residual labor transfer of rural areas has made great contributions to the prosperity of urban economy in my country.However,there are many restrictions for migrant workers such as housing household registration system and high enrollment costs,which is relatively disadvantageous.In China,higher education resources are still relatively scarce,especially for high-quality higher education resources.The left-behind experience of migrant workers’ children may affect their access to higher education,which means that rural parents’ migrant-working invisibly reduces their children’s opportunity to acquire better higher education resources,so that it becomes difficult for students from poor and humble families to become outstanding.In order to explore the absence of parental education on the achievement of the higher education achievements of future generations,based on mixed cross-sectional data from CFPS2010-2018,using Endogenous Switch Probit model(ESP),this paper estimates the impact of parental migrant-working on the higher education of left-behind children.Then with the aid of the intermediary effect model,this paper try to estimate the potential intermediary effect of children’s self-expectations on education.After controlling for the sex of the children,the age difference between the children and their parents,the years,years and regions of education of the parents,the study found that:(1)Compared with the children whose parents do not go out to work,the parents’ going out to work has a significant negative impact on their children’s higher education for further study and self-education,which is embodied in two aspects: firstly,compared with the sample of parents who do not go out to work,the children of one or both parents who go out to work are less likely to enter universities,and their own desire for higher education(self-education expectation)is lower.(2)Children’s self-education expectation is one of the mechanisms that parents go out to work and affect their children’s higher education.Parents go out to work and reduce children’s self-education expectation,thereby inhibiting children’s probability of entering a higher school.(3)The significant negative impact of parents’ going out to work on their children’s college education mainly exists in the sample families with higher rural income level,but for the families with lower income,the negative impact is not obvious.(4)Compared with father’s going out for work,mother’s going out for work has a greater negative impact on children’s higher education,which indicates that mother,as the caregiver of rural families in China,plays an indispensable role in raising and educating children,and the absence of mother’s role brings more significant negative effects on children’s education.(5)There is obvious heterogeneity in time and space in the influence of parents going out to work on their children’s higher education.Parents who go to work in secondary school are less likely to advance to higher education than their children in primary school,in other words,parents’ accompanying or urging constraints in secondary school may have a greater impact on their children’s ability to enter university than they would at an earlier stage.In addition,parents who work farther away from home will have a greater negative impact on their children’s higher education.(6)Parental out-migration has a significant negative impact on both male offspring and female offspring’s higher education,and there is no significant gender difference in the impact.(7)When we expand our vision from rural left-behind children to all urban and rural left-behind children,the absence of parents’ role in the educational process still has a negative impact on the educational achievements and expectations of future generations that cannot be ignored.