Sons or Daughters? Gender, Child Migration and Health of Parents Left Behind∗

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Wahba, Jackline Wang, Chuhong
Copyright Year	2016
Abstract	We provide new empirical evidence on the impact of adult children's rural-urban migration on the health of elderly parents left behind in rural China, by distinguishing between the gender of the migrant child. To deal with migration endogeneity, we exploit a novel variation in children's exogenous characteristics and apply instrumental variables methods. Employing data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), we find that migration of daughters increases parental health in various dimensions. In contrast, we find no evidence of such beneficial effects when sons migrate. We further explore the mechanism through which these gender-biased effects may arise. Our findings have important implications for would-be parents in China and for regions and countries that have high rates of female emigration. JEL Classification: O15, I12, J14, J16, R23.
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://conference.iza.org/conference_files/ICID_Renmin_2016/wang_c10475.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article