Order Matters: The Effect of Second-Wave Migration on Student Academic Performance in Northwest China
The migration of hundreds of millions of workers from the Chinese countryside to the city has created a generation of Left Behind Children (or LBCs), who now number more than 60 million. Existing studies have not consistently estimated the impact of parental migration on the academic performance of LBCs. Some studies suggest that remittance income could improve academic performance by easing liquidity constraints and increasing investment in children and their education; other studies claim that parental absence could harm academic performance by decreasing parental care and increasing the domestic responsibilities of the children left behind. Because of these trade-offs, the results of empirical studies that seek to measure the net impact of being left-behind on academic performance may be inconsistent because the relative strength of the income and parental care effects may be different for first-wave migration (that is, migration during the first period of time in which any—or one—parent migrates) and second-wave migration (i.e., migration when the remaining parent leaves the home and there is no parental care at home).